The Ministry of Foreign Affairs will convene a meeting next week to study President Chen Shui-bian's (陳水扁) proposal to change the names of the country's overseas representative offices, Maysing Yang (楊黃美幸), chairperson of the ministry's Research and Planning Committee, said yesterday.
Yang said the committee, which is in charge of rating the performance of the overseas representative offices, does not plan to assess their achievements by the progress of their negotiations with the host countries regarding the name changes.
"Bilateral relations between Taiwan and these countries vary. It is not proper to use the name change issue as a criteria to rate the offices," Yang said in a press conference.
Meanwhile, 10 representatives of overseas missions have returned to Taipei for consultation.
They will exchange views with senior government officials on Chen's plan to correct the name of the nation's representative offices from Taipei to Taiwan, the ministry said.
The ministry is scheduled to hold a tea party this morning for returning overseas mission chiefs to meet with the media.
The mission chiefs include Chiou Jong-nan (
Ministry spokesman Michel Lu (
Lu, who was previously posted in France, said it took 15 years for Taiwan and France to reach an agreement to allow the country's representative office in Paris to use "Taipei" in its official title.
"We can only take a step at a time," Lu said.
He said that the president is fully aware of the challenges the overseas representative offices are facing as they negotiate with their host nations about the name changes.
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Honor guards are to stop performing changing of the guard ceremonies around a statue of Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石) to avoid “worshiping authoritarianism,” the Ministry of Culture said yesterday. The fate of the bronze statue has long been the subject of fierce and polarizing debate in Taiwan, which has transformed from an autocracy under Chiang into one of Asia’s most vibrant democracies. The changing of the guard each hour at the Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall in Taipei is a major tourist attraction, but starting from 9am on Monday, the ceremony is to be moved outdoors to Democracy Boulevard, outside the eponymous blue-and-white memorial
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CASES SLOWING: Although weekly COVID-19 cases are rising, the growth rate has been falling, from 90 percent to 30 percent, 14 percent and 6 percent, the CDC said COVID-19 hospitalizations last week rose 6 percent to 987, while deaths soared 55 percent to 99, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) said yesterday, adding that the recent wave of infections would likely peak this week. People aged 65 or older accounted for 79 percent of the hospitalizations and 90 percent of the deaths, the majority of whom have or had underlying health conditions, CDC data showed. The youngest hospitalized case last week was a six-month-old, who was born preterm and was unvaccinated, CDC physician Lin Yung-ching (林詠青) said. The infant had a fever, coughing and a runny nose early this month, but