Australia is to push for an international investigation into the COVID-19 pandemic at next month’s annual meeting of the World Health Assembly, the decisionmaking body of the WHO, its prime minister said yesterday.
Australia wants the WHO to be strengthened and is suggesting introducing inspectors with the power to enter a nation to respond more quickly to a health crisis in the style of weapons inspectors.
Australia sits on the executive board of the assembly, which determines WHO policies and appoints the director-general. The assembly is due to meet on May 17.
Photo: EPA-EFE
The pandemic is believed to have emerged in a market selling wildlife in Wuhan, China, late last year. It has spread around the world infecting more than 2.6 million people and killing more than 184,000.
The WHO’s response to the outbreak has become contentious, with US President Donald Trump accusing it of being “China-centric” and suspending US funding.
Diplomats believe the meeting opens the door for discussion of Australia’s call for an inquiry because agenda items already include calls for a “lessons learned” review of health emergencies.
“The World Health Assembly is coming up in May. There are opportunities to pursue that matter there and that is our first port of call,” Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison said.
Australia has overcome the worst of its coronavirus outbreak, which is why it has moved on to lobbying other nations to support its call for an inquiry, but it understood that other nations were still dealing with high death rates, sources said.
Morrison has called leaders in France, Germany and the US, and is expected to lobby Britain and Canada as Australia seeks support from “like-minded” nations.
France and Britain on Wednesday said that it was not the time for an investigation.
Morrison told reporters he understood hesitation about the timing and played down suggestions China would be targeted.
“Our purpose here is just pretty simple, we would like the world to be safer when it comes to viruses,” he said.
Although the proposal would be for a broad review of the coronavirus outbreak and the WHO response, which could then propose ways to strengthen WHO powers, Morrison said that he supported a weapons-inspector-style arrangement for health emergencies that nations would sign up to.
“They don’t have a roving commission to go anywhere they want in the world, but if you are going to be a member of a club like the World Health Organization there should be obligations and responsibilities attached,” he said.
WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus has said the agency would carry out an “after-action” review when the pandemic is over.
Former Australian diplomat and intelligence chief Richard Maude said Australia had led coalitions of nations on issues including disarmament, non-proliferation and Russia’s downing of flight MH17.
“Australia has a good record of getting things done in multilateral processes, including the United Nations,“ said Maude, executive director of policy at the Asia Society Australia. “The problem for Australia right now is that while the objectives — greater transparency and learning lessons — are reasonable and important, the issue of the origins of the virus and the path of its transmission have become so caught up in geopolitics and deteriorating US-China ties that China is very unlikely to cooperate.”
In related news, China yesterday announced that it would give another US$30 million to the WHO to help in the global fight against the pandemic, days after Washington said it would freeze funding.
Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesman Geng Shuang (耿爽) said that the new donation would be in addition to a previous US$20 million committed and would help “strengthen developing countries’ health systems.”
He added that China’s contribution to the UN agency “reflects the support and trust of the Chinese government and people for the WHO.”
In announcing the funding freeze last week, Trump accused the WHO of covering up the seriousness of the outbreak in China before it spread.
He has also charged the WHO with being “very China-centric,” despite Washington’s heavy funding.
US taxpayers provided between US$400 million and US$500 million per year to the WHO, while “in contrast, China contributes roughly US$40 million a year and even less,” Trump said.
PREPAREDNESS: Given the difficulty of importing ammunition during wartime, the Ministry of National Defense said it would prioritize ‘coproduction’ partnerships A newly formed unit of the Marine Corps tasked with land-based security operations has recently replaced its aging, domestically produced rifles with more advanced, US-made M4A1 rifles, a source said yesterday. The unnamed source familiar with the matter said the First Security Battalion of the Marine Corps’ Air Defense and Base Guard Group has replaced its older T65K2 rifles, which have been in service since the late 1980s, with the newly received M4A1s. The source did not say exactly when the upgrade took place or how many M4A1s were issued to the battalion. The confirmation came after Chinese-language media reported
A Ministry of Foreign Affairs official yesterday said that a delegation that visited China for an APEC meeting did not receive any kind of treatment that downgraded Taiwan’s sovereignty. Department of International Organizations Director-General Jonathan Sun (孫儉元) said that he and a group of ministry officials visited Shenzhen, China, to attend the APEC Informal Senior Officials’ Meeting last month. The trip went “smoothly and safely” for all Taiwanese delegates, as the Chinese side arranged the trip in accordance with long-standing practices, Sun said at the ministry’s weekly briefing. The Taiwanese group did not encounter any political suppression, he said. Sun made the remarks when
The Taiwanese passport ranked 33rd in a global listing of passports by convenience this month, rising three places from last month’s ranking, but matching its position in January last year. The Henley Passport Index, an international ranking of passports by the number of designations its holder can travel to without a visa, showed that the Taiwan passport enables holders to travel to 139 countries and territories without a visa. Singapore’s passport was ranked the most powerful with visa-free access to 192 destinations out of 227, according to the index published on Tuesday by UK-based migration investment consultancy firm Henley and Partners. Japan’s and
BROAD AGREEMENT: The two are nearing a trade deal to reduce Taiwan’s tariff to 15% and a commitment for TSMC to build five more fabs, a ‘New York Times’ report said Taiwan and the US have reached a broad consensus on a trade deal, the Executive Yuan’s Office of Trade Negotiations said yesterday, after a report said that Washington is set to reduce Taiwan’s tariff rate to 15 percent. The New York Times on Monday reported that the two nations are nearing a trade deal to reduce Taiwan’s tariff rate to 15 percent and commit Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) to building at least five more facilities in the US. “The agreement, which has been under negotiation for months, is being legally scrubbed and could be announced this month,” the paper said,
RSS