Taiwan and the Philippines are currently holding their first formal fishery talks in decades, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said yesterday.
The goal of the talks, which began on Monday in Taipei, is to discuss the implementation of proposals made at a previous meeting in June on maintaining order in the waters where the two countries’ exclusive economic zones overlap, ministry spokesperson Anna Kao (高安) confirmed.
“We also hope to further implement a consensus reached during the preparatory meeting and establish institutionalized negotiations,” she said.
Despite being pressed by the media, Kao declined to provide further details on the talks’ agenda, the officials who are heading the discussions and whether a joint statement will be issued after the talks.
“The talks are ongoing,” she said. “We’ll reveal related details after the talks are completed.”
The June 14 meeting, which was billed as a “preparatory” talk, came in response to an incident on May 9 in which a Philippine Coast Guard personnel opened fire on a Taiwanese fishing boat in the two countries’ overlapping maritime territories.
The incident left 65-year-old Taiwanese fisherman Hung Shih-cheng (洪石成) dead and triggered a diplomatic standoff that lasted until early August.
One of Taiwan’s conditions for ending the stalemate was to open talks on ensuring a safe environment in which fishermen from both sides can operate.
During the June 14 meeting, the two sides reached an initial consensus that there should be no use of force or violence during patrols of fishing grounds and that a mechanism should be established to inform each other of any fishery-related incidents.
The mechanism will expedite the notification of incidents such as maritime chases, the boarding and inspection of fishing boats by either side, and the arrest and detention of fishermen, the ministry said.
After the June talks, the two countries had agreed to hold a second meeting on Sept. 16, but the follow-up talks were delayed because of fighting between Muslim rebels and Philippine government forces in the southern Philippines, according to the ministry.
Considering that most countries issue more than five denominations of banknotes, the central bank has decided to redesign all five denominations, the bank said as it prepares for the first major overhaul of the banknotes in more than 24 years. Central bank Governor Yang Chin-lung (楊金龍) is expected to report to the Legislative Yuan today on the bank’s operations and the redesign’s progress. The bank in a report sent to the legislature ahead of today’s meeting said it had commissioned a survey on the public’s preferences. Survey results showed that NT$100 and NT$1,000 banknotes are the most commonly used, while NT$200 and NT$2,000
The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) yesterday reported the first case of a new COVID-19 subvariant — BA.3.2 — in a 10-year-old Singaporean girl who had a fever upon arrival in Taiwan and tested positive for the disease. The girl left Taiwan on March 20 and the case did not have a direct impact on the local community, it said. The WHO added the BA.3.2 strain to its list of Variants Under Monitoring in December last year, but this was the first imported case of the COVID-19 variant in Taiwan, CDC Deputy Director-General Lin Ming-cheng (林明誠) said. The girl arrived in Taiwan on
South Korea is planning to revise its controversial electronic arrival card, a step Taiwanese officials said prompted them to hold off on planned retaliatory measures, a South Korean media report said yesterday. A Yonhap News Agency report said that the South Korean Ministry of Foreign Affairs is planning to remove the “previous departure place” and “next destination” fields from its e-arrival card system. The plan, reached after interagency consultations, is under review and aims to simplify entry procedures and align the electronic form with the paper version, a South Korean ministry official said. The fields — which appeared only on the electronic form
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) is suspending retaliation measures against South Korea that were set to take effect tomorrow, after Seoul said it is updating its e-arrival system, MOFA said today. The measures were to be a new round of retaliation after Taiwan on March 1 changed South Korea's designation on government-issued alien resident certificates held by South Korean nationals to "South Korea” from the "Republic of Korea," the country’s official name. The move came after months of protests to Seoul over its listing of Taiwan as "China (Taiwan)" in dropdown menus on its new online immigration entry system. MOFA last week
RSS