Taiwan has not been invited to a summit of major donors to the relief operation in the wake of the tsunami which devastated countries around the Indian Ocean on Dec. 26.
This is in spite of Taiwan's being one of top 10 donors of aid, having pledged US$50 million to the relief effort.
PHOTO: AFP
While the Ministry of Foreign Affairs told the Indonesian government which is hosting the summit that it would like to attend, Jakarta didn't even bother to reply.
Ministry spokesman Michel Lu (呂慶龍) declined to comment on whether Indonesia, which received considerable aid from Taiwan since the disaster, has treated Taiwan unfairly by barring it from the conference.
"We simply want to express our strong hope that we can attend the meeting," he said.
Taiwan has concentrated its relief efforts on Thailand and Indonesia and Minister of Foreign Affairs Mark Chen (陳唐山) called on the international community to allow Taiwan to join the Jakarta conference, at least in the capacity of an observer.
Meanwhile destruction on Indonesia's tsunami-wracked Sumatra island is the worst US Secretary of State Colin Powell has ever seen, the battle-seasoned war veteran said as he prepared for a meeting of world leaders to coordinate history's largest relief operation.
"I can not begin to imagine the horror that went through the families and all of the people who heard this noise and then had their lives snuffed out by this wave," Powell said yesterday after flying over flattened villages along Sumatra's northern coast, which was home to two-thirds of the nearly 150,000 killed across Asia.
"I've been in war and I've been through a number of hurricanes, tornados and other relief operations, but I've never seen anything like this."
So far US$2 billion has been pledged to relief efforts in 11 countries hit by the Dec. 26 quake off the western coast of Indonesia that triggered waves causing deaths as far away as East Africa.
But the challenges are enormous, with millions homeless and threatened by disease. The UN said it will build camps on Sumatra for up to 500,000 people.
Haggard, dehydrated tsunami survivors have been flooding hospitals. Psychologists were struggling to help children cope with the unspeakable tragedy. Aftershocks added to the threats, with another strong quake felt yesterday, rattling the region but causing no known injuries.
Powell was one of the first to arrive in Indonesia ahead of today's donor's conference, where world leaders will iron out problems coordinating the relief operation and discuss the need for a tsunami warning system for the Indian Ocean. One already exists in the Pacific.
From an altitude of a few hundred meters, Powell and his entourage saw not a tree or building standing along the coast. City block after city block in Banda Aceh, the main city on northern Sumatra, had been swept clean. A large ship lay on its side, half submerged in water and mud.
The former US army general said he saw "how the wave came ashore, pushing everything in its path -- cars, ships, freighters overturned -- all the way up to the foothills, and then starting up the foothills until finally the waves came to a stop."
Money has poured in from around the world, the largest share from Japan.
"I think Japan must do as much as it can to help," Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi said, calling for companies in the world's second-largest economy to respond with donations to the kind of disaster seen "only once a century."
But the fragility of relief and rehabilitation efforts was underscored by the temporary closure Tuesday of the main, overstretched airport in Sumatra. Yesterday, a load of aid supplies fell from a US helicopter over the island's city of Medan, hitting a shopping mall. No one was hurt.
Pilots, meanwhile, were ferrying survivors from hard-hit towns and villages in the region to medical help. But that created a new challenge for relief workers: bottlenecks at overcrowded hospitals.
About a dozen people lay on stretchers on the sidewalk outside Fakina Hospital in Banda Aceh. Many of the hospital's rooms had no power. Walls were flecked with blood and doctors had run out of stands for intravenous fluid bags, hanging them from cords strung across the ceiling.
"It's heartbreaking," said Leslie Ansag of Everett, Washington, a Navy medic from the American aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln, which was off Sumatra to help the rescue effort.
In Thailand, where more than 2,200 foreign tourists were among 5,000 killed, police said they were searching for a 12-year-old Swedish boy last seen leaving a hospital with an unknown man the day after the tsunami hit.
Also see stories:
Realtor donates NT16.9 million for disaster relief
Self-styled doctors pose health risk to survivors
GEARING UP: An invasion would be difficult and would strain China’s forces, but it has conducted large-scale training supporting an invasion scenario, the report said China increased its military pressure on Taiwan last year and took other steps in preparation for a potential invasion, an annual report published by the US Department of Defense on Wednesday showed. “Throughout 2023, Beijing continued to erode longstanding norms in and around Taiwan by employing a range of pressure tactics against Taiwan,” the report said, which is titled “Military and Security Developments Involving the People’s Republic of China (PRC) 2024.” The Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) “is preparing for a contingency to unify Taiwan with the PRC by force, if perceived as necessary by Beijing, while simultaneously deterring, delaying or denying
‘ONE BRIDGE’: The US president-elect met with Akie Abe on Dec. 15 in Florida and the two discussed a potential Taiwan-China conflict’s implications for world peace US president-elect Donald Trump has described Taiwan as “a major issue for world peace” during a meeting with Akie Abe, the widow of late Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe, Japanese newspaper the Yomiuri Shimbun quoted sources as saying in a report yesterday. Trump met with Akie Abe on Dec. 15 at the Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida, where the two discussed the Russo-Ukrainian war and the situation in the Taiwan Strait. During the meeting, Trump spoke on the implications for world peace of a potential Taiwan-China conflict, which “indicated his administration’s stance of placing importance on dealing with the situation in
QUICK LOOK: The amendments include stricter recall requirements and Constitutional Court procedures, as well as a big increase in local governments’ budgets Portions of controversial amendments to tighten requirements for recalling officials and Constitutional Court procedures were passed by opposition lawmakers yesterday following clashes between lawmakers in the morning, as Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) members tried to block Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) legislators from entering the chamber. Parts of the Public Officials Election and Recall Act (公職人員選舉罷免法) and Constitutional Court Procedure Act (憲法訴訟法) passed the third reading yesterday. The legislature was still voting on various amendments to the Act Governing the Allocation of Government Revenues and Expenditures (財政收支劃分法) as of press time last night, after the session was extended to midnight. Amendments to Article 4
ALLIANCE: Washington continues to implement its policy of normalizing arms sales to Taiwan and helps enhance its defense, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said US President Joe Biden on Friday agreed to provide US$571.3 million in defense support for Taiwan, the White House said, while the US State Department approved the potential sale of US$265 million in military equipment. Biden had delegated to the secretary of state the authority “to direct the drawdown of up to US$571.3 million in defense articles and services of the Department of Defense, and military education and training, to provide assistance to Taiwan,” the White House said in a statement. However, it did not provide specific details about this latest package, which was the third of its kind to
RSS