The Ministry of Foreign Affairs said yesterday that Taiwan might resort to a different approach than last year in its bid for representation at the UN.
The 64th UN General Assembly session is scheduled to open on Sept. 15 at UN headquarters in New York and Taiwan must submit a bid proposal to the UN Secretariat through a diplomatic ally 30 days before that date for it to be considered for the General Assembly’s agenda.
Pressed by reporters on whether that means that the nation would not be making any bid if nothing was done before today’s deadline, Deputy Foreign Minister Andrew Hsia (夏立言) said that was not necessarily the case, as there were many different ways to approach a UN bid.
“If no proposal is made on that day [Aug. 15], then we might make a different bid. We will have a new approach,” said Hsia, without elaborating. “I’m sure you will get an answer [next week].”
Taiwan has not been represented at the UN since 1971 when the Republic of China’s seat was given to the People’s Republic of China.
Its annual efforts to rejoin the body since 1993 have all failed, as have its attempts to be part of UN-affiliated organizations, mainly because of China’s obstruction.
With relations between the two sides of the Taiwan Strait improving since President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) administration took office last year, Taiwan was invited to attend the World Health Assembly — the decision-making arm of the WHO — for the first time in May as an observer.
Last year, in a departure from the high-profile push in 2007 for full membership at the UN using the title Taiwan, the country proposed that it be allowed to “participate meaningfully in the activities of UN specialized agencies.”
The request again failed because of Beijing’s objections, even though it was well received by countries such as the US, Japan and some members of the EU, which issued statements in support of the bid.
Former president Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) mention of Taiwan’s official name during a meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) on Wednesday was likely a deliberate political play, academics said. “As I see it, it was intentional,” National Chengchi University Graduate Institute of East Asian Studies professor Wang Hsin-hsien (王信賢) said of Ma’s initial use of the “Republic of China” (ROC) to refer to the wider concept of “the Chinese nation.” Ma quickly corrected himself, and his office later described his use of the two similar-sounding yet politically distinct terms as “purely a gaffe.” Given Ma was reading from a script, the supposed slipup
Former Czech Republic-based Taiwanese researcher Cheng Yu-chin (鄭宇欽) has been sentenced to seven years in prison on espionage-related charges, China’s Ministry of State Security announced yesterday. China said Cheng was a spy for Taiwan who “masqueraded as a professor” and that he was previously an assistant to former Cabinet secretary-general Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰). President-elect William Lai (賴清德) on Wednesday last week announced Cho would be his premier when Lai is inaugurated next month. Today is China’s “National Security Education Day.” The Chinese ministry yesterday released a video online showing arrests over the past 10 years of people alleged to be
THE HAWAII FACTOR: While a 1965 opinion said an attack on Hawaii would not trigger Article 5, the text of the treaty suggests the state is covered, the report says NATO could be drawn into a conflict in the Taiwan Strait if Chinese forces attacked the US mainland or Hawaii, a NATO Defense College report published on Monday says. The report, written by James Lee, an assistant research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institute of European and American Studies, states that under certain conditions a Taiwan contingency could trigger Article 5 of NATO, under which an attack against any member of the alliance is considered an attack against all members, necessitating a response. Article 6 of the North Atlantic Treaty specifies that an armed attack in the territory of any member in Europe,
The bodies of two individuals were recovered and three additional bodies were discovered on the Shakadang Trail (砂卡礑) in Taroko National Park, eight days after the devastating earthquake in Hualien County, search-and-rescue personnel said. The rescuers reported that they retrieved the bodies of a man and a girl, suspected to be the father and daughter from the Yu (游) family, 500m from the entrance of the trail on Wednesday. The rescue team added that despite the discovery of the two bodies on Friday last week, they had been unable to retrieve them until Wednesday due to the heavy equipment needed to lift