Vice President Annette Lu (
Lu made the remarks when she received foreign guests attending a regional security seminar over the weekend in Taipei at the Presidential Office.
Lu noted that the International Seminar on Asia-Pacific Cooperative Security is significant because it comes at a time when the US-led forces have been waging war in Iraq for the past two weeks.
The vice president spoke of three "wars" currently being waged in the world: the one in Iraq, the one to fight the potentially deadly severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) and the looming conflict against North Korea because of the reactivation of its nuclear facilities.
Lu said that "mankind is now in the midst of World War III," although the means and locations of this "war" are distinctively different from the previous two world wars.
The outbreak of SARS has become a far more serious issue than first thought, Lu said, adding that because China was slow to reveal information on SARS, the infectious disease was able to travel across the globe.
She said that the conventional concept of national security is confined to national defense and military capabilities, but the outbreak of SARS has forced a rethink; security should also include public health and quarantine issues.
"One must never ignore the issues of mankind when talking about security in this century," she said.
Lu said that the anti-war protests around the world have shown that war is not the answer; peace is the only solution.
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