Taiwan and its diplomatic allies launched the nation's latest bid for UN entry on Thursday as the 61st UN General Assembly prepares to convene on Sept. 12, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) confirmed yesterday.
This marks the country's 14th consecutive bid for participation in the international body. All of its previous attempts have failed because of China's obstruction.
The proposal this year addresses "the question of the representation and participation of the 23 million people of Taiwan in the United Nations" and requests the inclusion of Taiwan's bid as a supplementary item to the agenda of the upcoming session of the General Assembly.
PHOTO: LO PEI-DER, TAIPEI TIMES
In addition, a second proposal termed the "peace proposal" was also launched, asking the UN to take a more proactive role in maintaining peace and security in East Asia.
Director of MOFA's Department of International Organizations John Chen (
The second proposal "urges East Asian countries to settle disputes through peaceful means and encourages concerned countries in the region to take further steps toward military transparency and confidence-building."
To highlight the status of Taiwan, the wording in this year's proposal refers to the country's name as "Republic of China [Taiwan]" in the first instance only and thereafter refers to the nation as Taiwan.
This is in contrast to proposals in previous years where the "Republic of China" was used throughout the document to represent Taiwan, Chen said.
This year's proposal also directly asks the UN to "recognize" the right to representation of the 23 million people of Taiwan as opposed to requesting the UN to "study" the possibilities of Taiwanese being represented in the world body, reflecting a more proactive stance from the government in its pursuance of UN participation, Chen noted.
As part of the publicity campaign for this year's UN bid, the official said that the foreign ministry has been planning a video conference between President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁), the media and opinion leaders in the US before the convening of the General Assembly.
Previously, local media had reported that the president had voiced the idea that Taiwan should use the name of "Taiwan" in this year's UN bid.
Meanwhile, Andrew Hsia (夏立言), director of the Taipei Economic and Cultural Office (TECO) in New York, yesterday said that the severance of official ties with Chad would not affect Taiwan's campaign to join the UN.
Taiwan will keep telling the UN that it is determined to be part of the UN family in spite of its recent loss of ties with Chad, he said.
This year, Taiwan's UN campaign will use the theme of "UN-HUMAN" to underscore the world body's "unhuman" treatment of Taiwan's people, said Hsia.
Last year, Taiwan campaigned on the theme of "UN-FAIR" and the UN turned out to be "unfair" by refusing to discuss Taiwan's representation in the organization and cutting short the time its allies had to speak for it.
The Ministry of Transportation and Communications yesterday inaugurated the Danjiang Bridge across the Tamsui River in New Taipei City, saying that the structure would be an architectural icon and traffic artery for Taiwan. Feted as a major engineering achievement, the Danjiang Bridge is 920m long, 211m tall at the top of its pylon, and is the longest single-pylon asymmetric cable-stayed bridge in the world, the government’s Web site for the structure said. It was designed by late Iraqi-British architect Zaha Hadid. The structure, with a maximum deck of 70m, accommodates road and light rail traffic, and affords a 200m navigation channel for boats,
PRECISION STRIKES: The most significant reason to deploy HIMARS to outlying islands is to establish a ‘dead zone’ that the PLA would not dare enter, a source said A High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS) would be deployed to Penghu County and Dongyin Island (東引) in Lienchiang County (Matsu) to force the Chinese military to retreat at least 100km from the coastline, a military source said yesterday. Taiwan has been procuring HIMARS and Army Tactical Missile Systems (ATACMS) from the US in batches. Once all batches have been delivered, Taiwan would possess 111 HIMARS units and 504 ATACMS, which have a range of 300km. Considering that “offense is the best defense,” the military plans to forward-deploy the systems to outlying islands such as Penghu and Dongyin so that
WHAT WAS ALL THAT FOR? Jaw Shaw-kong said that Cheng Li-wen had pushed for more drastic cuts and attacked him, just for the outcome to be nearly identical to his bill The legislature yesterday passed a supplementary budget bill to fund the purchase of separate packages of US military equipment, with the combined amount of spending capped at NT$780 billion (US$24.8 billion). The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) used their legislative majority to pass the bill, which runs until 2033 and has two main funding provisions. One was for NT$300 billion of arms sales already approved by the US for Taiwan on Dec. 17 last year, the other was for NT$480 billion for another arms package expected to be announced by Washington. The bill, which fell short of the NT$1.25
‘CLEAR MESSAGE’: The bill would set up an interagency ‘tiger team’ to review sanctions tools and other economic options to help deter any Chinese aggression toward Taiwan US Representative Young Kim has introduced a bill to deter Chinese aggression against Taiwan, calling for an interagency “tiger team” to preplan coordinated sanctions and economic measures in response to possible Chinese military or political action against Taiwan. “[Chinese President] Xi Jinping [習近平] has directed the People’s Liberation Army to be ready to invade Taiwan by 2027. China has a plan. America should have one too,” Kim said in a news release on Thursday last week. She introduced the “Deter PRC [People’s Republic of China] aggression against Taiwan act” to “ensure the US has a coordinated sanctions strategy ready should
RSS