A senior EU lawmaker expressed full support for Taiwan’s bid to join the UN’s specialized agencies this year and urged the European Parliament to show goodwill toward the bid, a Brussels-based magazine said in a report on Thursday.
Center-right parliamentarian Georg Jarzembowski, chairman of the parliament’s Taiwan Friendship Group, was quoted by the Parliament Magazine on its Web site as saying he “fully endorsed” Taiwan’s move.
“It is a perfectly reasonable and well-founded request and the very least China can do. After the success of the Olympics, it would represent an appropriate goodwill gesture on the part of Beijing,” he said.
Pointing out that Taiwan’s inclusion in such organizations is vitally important not just for Taiwan but for the rest of the world, Jarzembowski said that Taiwan’s exclusion from the WHO has been detrimental to the health rights of the 23 million people of Taiwan and foreigners residing in and traveling to Taiwan.
The WHO, the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) and the International Maritime Organization (IMO) are among the 16 UN specialized bodies that Taiwan cites in its latest bid for meaningful participation in UN activities.
Taiwan failed in its previous annual bids over the past 15 years to seek full membership in the world body because of obstruction by China.
This year, the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) government changed its strategy to focus on meaningful participation in one or more of the UN specialized agencies.
Two of the nation’s 23 diplomatic allies — St. Vincent and the Solomon Islands — submitted Taiwan’s bid proposal to the UN Secretariat on Aug. 15.
The report also quoted Edward McMillan-Scott, a vice president of the European Parliament, as saying : “I still think Taiwan should push for full membership of the UN.”
The new bid is widely seen as a crucial test to see if China accepts President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) olive branch of a diplomatic truce with Beijing.
However, Chinese Ambassador to the UN Wang Guangya (王光亞) has already blasted Taiwan’s allies for trying to put Taiwan’s UN participation bid on the General Assembly’s agenda.
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