Foreign Minister Francisco Ou (歐鴻鍊) said yesterday that the nation has suffered no harm since proposing a “diplomatic truce” with China, but pledged that the Ministry of Foreign Affairs would not be slack and would focus on Taiwan’s participation in the WHO.
Ou made the remarks at a reception for the media in which he defended President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) strategy of seeking a “diplomatic truce”with Beijing.
“In order to remove the ultimate cause of Taiwan’s diplomatic predicament, the best way is to improve cross-strait relations,” Ou said, adding that China had no reason not to accept the truce as it was in Beijing’s national interest.
Admitting that it was very difficult for Taiwan to participate in international organizations at present, Ou said that “the Foreign Ministry will gather its strength in one direction — that is the WHO bid.”
“We hope that concrete results will be realized in two to three years,” he said.
Ou said that participation in international organizations was a complicated issue for Taiwan that would take time to achieve. Therefore, the ministry would treat the issue as a long-term objective and would do all it could to achieve the goal.
Noting that the concept of a “diplomatic truce,” one of the major underpinnings of Ma’s new diplomatic policy, had been criticized and questioned by many people, Ou reiterated that the strategy did not mean the ministry would take a vacation and that everything that needed to be done was being carried out.
“The ‘diplomatic truce’ is just a strategy and a means to pursue diplomatic co-existence and co-prosperity, which is exactly what President Ma’s ‘modus vivendi’ means,” he said.
“Modus vivendi comes in many forms, the most concrete of which is the diplomatic truce,” Ou said, adding that “there would be no co-existence and co-prosperity if the diplomatic strife between the two sides of the Taiwan Strait continues.”
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:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
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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