A new bill sponsored by US Representative Sherrod Brown calling for a plan to endorse and obtain observer status for Taiwan at the annual summit of the World Health Assembly this coming May indicates renewed hope for Taiwan's WHO bid.
Headed by DPP Chairman Frank Hsieh (
Brown's aides noted that they were looking for additional sponsorship for a bill to support Taiwan's entry in the WHO, which may be introduced in Congress on Tuesday.
Meanwhile, Lee Ming-liang (
Lee will be joining Brown and other lawmakers in a breakfast meeting today to win greater support from Capitol Hill for Taiwan's participation in the WHO.
The bill proposes that the US secretary of state initiate a plan to endorse and obtain observer status for Taiwan at the annual week-long summit of the WHO assembly in May in Geneva, Switzerland.
The bill stipulates that the secretary of state should submit a written report to Congress containing the plan no later than 14 days after enactment of the bill.
Sources said more than a dozen lawmakers have already signed on to co-sponsor the bill, including Representative Henry Hyde, chairman of the powerful House International Relations Committee.
Brown introduced a similar bill last March, but no progress toward its passage was made.
Taiwan has been lobbying for WHO membership for many years, and although it has won great sympathy and support on Capital Hill, no substantial progress has been achieved.
Last October, the Department of Health in Taiwan was offended by a decision by the WHO to leave Taiwan off a list of a polio-free countries that was released in Japan. China was on the list, and Taiwan was included as a part of China.
Lee protested that "the success of polio eradication in Taiwan does not equate to China's situation."
Taiwan officials and Taiwan lobby groups such as the Formosa Association for Public Affairs said that they understand it is impossible to get US support for Taiwan's UN entry.
However, many of them believe that there is a window of opportunity with the Bush administration, as his team acknowledges Taiwan should have more international space and is likely to review US-Taiwan relations sometime in the next few months.
The officials and lobbyists said they are optimistic about gaining observer status in the WHO, though they say endorsement of Taiwan's full membership is still unlikely.
They hope to get the bill passed before May and are expecting further breakthroughs in Taiwan's participation in international organizations in the near future.
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
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), the world’s largest foundry service provider, yesterday said that global semiconductor revenue is projected to hit US$1.5 trillion in 2030, after the figure exceeds US$1 trillion this year, as artificial intelligence (AI) demand boosts consumption of token and compute power. “We are still at the beginning of the AI revolution, but we already see a significant impact across the whole semiconductor ecosystem,” TSMC deputy cochief operating officer Kevin Zhang (張曉強) said at the company’s annual technology symposium in Hsinchu City. “It is fair to say that in the past decade, smartphones and other mobile devices were
‘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