Voicing doubts about China's claim it would show "goodwill" to Taiwan to help it join the World Health Organization (WHO), the government yesterday announced the nation's ninth bid to enter the health body.
With the World Health Assembly (WHA) -- the WHO's highest governing body -- scheduled to begin in Geneva next Monday, Minister of Foreign Affairs Mark Chen (陳唐山), Minister of Health Hou Sheng-mou (侯勝茂) and Government Information Office Minister Pasuya Yao (姚文智) held a press conference to appeal for the international community's support for Taiwan's participation.
Though politicians in China have recently expressed on many different occasions their willingness to assist Taiwan in joining the WHO, Chen said that their remarks "have either been vague or merely reiterations of the same old rigid stance."
PHOTO: GEORGE TSORNG, TAIPEI TIMES
Beijing has failed to show any new concrete measures or creative ideas to help Taiwan's health bid, and has not ceased to obstruct Taiwan's participation in WHO-related activities, Chen said.
"Just one week ago, when six Taiwanese medical experts traveled to Phuket, Thailand, to participate in a WHO conference on health in the areas struck by the South Asian tsunamis, they were ruthlessly suppressed by China," Chen said.
When Taiwanese journalists sought to apply for press passes to report on the WHA, Chen added, they were blocked by China behind the scenes.
"Under such circumstances, it is hard to believe that China means well," he said.
"I hope China does not publicly send vague messages while simultaneously blocking Taiwan's bid to participate in the WHO," Chen said.
Vice Minister of Foreign Affairs Michael Kau (
The theme of World Health Day, which fell on April 7, and the 58th WHA is "Make Every Mother and Child Count."
"The WHO should add a note behind the slogan saying: Sorry, but not mothers and children in Taiwan," Kau said.
The diplomat, who recently toured Europe to rally support for Taiwan's health bid, said European politicians are caught in a moral and political dilemma when facing Taiwan's plea to back its entrance into the WHO.
Acknowledging the significance and legitimacy of Taiwan's participation in the health body, European officials nevertheless hesitated to lend support to Taiwan because they risk offending China, Kau said.
"A German politician told me he faced the greatest moral challenge in his life in deciding whether to support Taiwan's entrance into the WHO," Kau said.
Taiwan has mobilized its diplomatic allies to add Taiwan's application for observer status to the WHA agenda, and may set the country's status as a health entity, authority or territory in its bid, according to Kau.
Hou, who was in Europe last month to build support for Taiwan's WHO bid, implied he had suggested to EU officials that if the WHA decides to vote on including Taiwan's application for observership in its agenda, they could display their tacit backing for Taiwan by abstaining.
The health minister said Taiwan's exclusion from the WHO was unfair both to the Taiwanese people and to people in other countries because diseases know no borders.
Hou said Taiwan has the right to join the WHO and the International Health Regulations, the WHO's global legal framework for infectious disease control, in a "direct, separate, full and immediate" manner.
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