Taiwan received a letter from WHO Director-General Margaret Chan (陳馮富珍) on Wednesday inviting it to attend the annual World Health Assembly (WHA) to be held in Geneva, Switzerland, from May 16 to May 25, Minister of Foreign Affairs Timothy Yang (楊進添) said yesterday.
Yang confirmed the news in response to a query from Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) -Legislator Liu Shen-liang (劉盛良) at the legislature’s Foreign and Defense Affairs Committee.
The WHA is the WHO’s governing body. The invitation will be the third consecutive year Taiwan has been invited to attend the annual world health conference as an observer.
“[This] proves that rapprochement in cross-strait relations is beneficial to the promotion of benign cross-strait interactions in the international arena,” Yang said.
Taiwan was first invited by the WHO on April 28, 2009, to take part as an observer in that year’s WHA meeting under the name “Chinese Taipei.”
This year’s invitation is exactly the same as the one Taiwan received for the last two years, Yang said, referring to the format of the invitation and the manner in which Department of Health Minister Chiu Wen-ta (邱文達) was addressed as “minister.”
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