The government will dispatch top trade and agriculture officials to Geneva to join negotiations ahead of the end-of-the-month deadline for an outline accord on global trade, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said yesterday.
WTO members have held several separate group talks aiming to reach a framework accord on trade liberalization by the end of this month, leading to a full global commerce deal. The talks have been tough since a collapse of negotiations in Cancun last year.
"Our permanent mission to the WTO is very serious about the end of July deadline. We hope our top agriculture and trade officials can travel to Geneva to supervise the negotiation process," said Colvin Liu (劉榮座), director general of the ministry's Department of Econo-mic and Trade Affairs, in a press conference.
"Agriculture is the toughest issue in the talks," Liu said.
Lee Ching-lung (
"If talks on agriculture proceed smoothly, Vice Minister of Econo-mic Affairs Steve Chen (陳瑞隆) will lead another delegation to Geneva to negotiate non-agricultural issues," Liu said.
Chen said earlier in Geneva that through the combined force displayed by the Group of 10 (G10) in the WTO trade-liberalization talks, the nation's agricultural development and its farmers' interests will be safeguarded.
The G10 is made up of Taiwan, Bulgaria, Israel, Iceland, Japan, Mauritius, Norway, Switzerland, South Korea and Liechtenstein -- all major agricultural importers -- and is aimed at protecting and advancing the agricultural interests of its members in the Doha Round of trade negotiations.
On Sunday, Yen Ching-chang (
"However, Taiwan has made its stance fully known at various WTO occasions over the past year. In agricultural negotiations, where Taiwan is particularly weak, we have teamed up with the G10 to strongly express our special concerns and positions," he said.
As a relatively new WTO member, Taiwan's presentations in a negotiations have attracted considerable attention from other members, which "will significantly help Taiwan's trade interests," Yen said.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
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Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching