Taiwan off the agenda at WHO assembly
Print Edition
THE World Health Organization’s annual assembly yesterday refused to even discuss admitting Taiwan to the meeting.
Taiwan has been invited to attend the WHO’s main annual meeting as an observer every year since 2009, but this year it did not receive an invitation.
Relations with China’s mainland have become increasingly frosty since Taiwan’s leader Tsai Ing-wen took power almost a year ago.
In an interview on Sunday, Taiwan’s health chief Chen Shih-chung said he was “very, very disappointed” to be excluded from the meeting.
Representatives from 11 of WHO’s 194 member countries, including Nicaragua, Paraguay and Belize, put forward a proposal yesterday — the first day of the annual assembly — which would put offering Taiwan permanent observer status onto the agenda.
But the assembly decided to reject the proposal, leaving the issue off the agenda.
China hailed the decision to leave Taiwan observer status off the agenda.
“Taiwan is part of China. Questions regarding Taiwan are China’s internal affairs,” the Chinese representative at the meeting said.
Under Tsai’s predecessor Ma Ying-jeou, a cross-Strait agreement was reached allowing Taiwan to sit in on the World Health Assembly as an observer.
Today “the political foundation for Taiwan China to participate in the assembly this year is not there anymore,” the Chinese representative said yesterday. He rejected the notion put forth by the 11 countries that blocking Taiwan could hamper international cooperation and the rapid exchange of information on health matters.
The proposal’s real agenda, he said, was to help Taiwan “authorities to manipulate health issues in an attempt to expand their so-called international space and challenge the One China principle.”
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