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Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Director-General of the World Health Organization who has been blocking the darts thrown at him by the World Health Agency’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic, has placed himself at the center of yet another combat Shadow boxing between the United States and China for letting Taiwan attend next week’s World Health Assembly as an observer.
The autonomous island, which Beijing considers a wayward province awaiting reunification, has been excluded from WHO membership due to China’s objections.
Taiwan attended the World Health Assembly as a non-voting observer from 2009 to 2016. But Beijing has blocked Taipei’s representation at the event after a skeptic from China, Tsai Ing-wen was elected president in 2016. She was She is re-elected this year and is due to begin her second term on May 20, two days after the WHA meeting on May 18.
More than a dozen countries have proposed resolutions for the WHO to allow Taiwan to attend the World Health Assembly as an observer, arguing that the world needed to listen to Taiwan, which has presented itself as a model to combat the virus detected by first time in Wuhan, central China. year.
Since then, the disease has killed 2.97,000 people, infected more than 4 million, grounded the world economy, and triggered an exchange between the United States, China and WHO’s Tedros.
Taiwan has had around 400 cases and 7 deaths.
This will certainly not be the first time that attempts have been made to restore Taiwan’s observer status to the World Health Assembly.
Fourteen member states proposed the inclusion of Taiwan as an observer at the last WHO annual meeting on May 28 and 29, 2019. The WHO then cited “procedure followed in previous years” to allow two of them to speak in favor of the resolution and two against before the general assembly pronounced its decision.
Apart from China, Cuba had opposed the inclusion of Taiwan. Eswatini in southern Africa and Honduras in central America had spoken in favor.
Diplomats in Geneva and Washington told the Hindustan Times that the effort this time was to push for other countries to speak as well. The choir is growing, one of them said.
Canada has already supported Taiwan’s claim to be able to participate in the WHA meeting, apart from other countries such as Australia, Japan, Germany, France, the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand and the United States who are leading this campaign.
A report on CBS News by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation said Canada, for the first time, had even gone so far as to issue a verbal statement to two senior WHO executives asking that Taiwan be admitted as an observer at Monday’s meeting because of their input. it would be “Significant and important”.
Chinese diplomats have been hastening by coronavirus diseases, initially to minimize the chaos that the Sars-CoV-2 virus could cause in the world. And later, when the situation became manageable at home, even to mock countries that were struggling to contain their consequences if they highlighted the transparency and accountability of WHO or Beijing.
Wherever he could, he has also penalized critics. Just like when Australia supported the US call. USA For an investigation into the origin of the virus, Chinese authorities threatened to impose heavy tariffs on imports of barley and proceeded to suspend meat imports from four Australian suppliers.
India has yet to comment on the inclusion of Taiwan. But a government official pointed out that Beijing, which wants the world to recognize its “one China” principle, failed to show respect for India’s sovereignty when it comes to Kashmir, or building the economic border between China and Pakistan to through the Indian territory occupied by Islamabad.
It is unclear whether Prime Minister Nitin Gadkari’s comment in an interview to NDTV that the virus causing coronavirus disease was an unexpected comment or an indicator that the government has an open mind about the origin of the disease. Gadkari told the news channel that the virus causing Covid-19 was not a natural virus, but was created in a laboratory, echoing a charge that Washington has repeatedly made.
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