Sunday, April 30, 2006

PUBLIC POWER KEY TO WINNING E.U. SUPPORT FOR WHO BID: SCHOLARS

Taipei, April 29 (CNA) Taiwan needs to do a better job of utilizing public, societal and media influence to win the European Union's support for Taiwan's World Health Organization (WHO) bid, scholars said in a forum held in Taipei Saturday.

"With governmental efforts suffering nine straight years of setbacks due to China's obstruction, the political side of Taiwan's WHO bid is a stalemate, " said Wu Chih-chung, a Soochow University assistant professor who also serves as secretary-general of the European Union Study Association, the organizer of the forum.

The best way to turn things around is to increase the E.U.'s understanding of Taiwan through different channels -- non-governmental organizations, research and exchange groups, media reports, and various forms of bilateral exchanges, Wu said.

"Taiwan also has to replace 'sentiment' (from China's obstruction) with confidence, showing people what it can do with its advanced medical expertise and experience in fighting SARS and avian flu to make contributions to the WHO, " said Betty Chiu, an assistant researcher of the National Health Research Institutes.

The United States and Japan have publicly voiced their support for Taiwan's WHO bid, which is encouraging news, Wu said.

"That makes winning the E.U.'s support even more critical. And there's no way we can't do it. Taiwan is the E.U.'s fourth largest trading partner in Asia and 10th largest trading partner in the world, " he added.

China is obviously the No.1 reason why the E.U. does not support Taiwan's bid in public, Wu said.

"Almost everyone we talked to said they thought Taiwan should be in the WHO, but whenever we brought up the 'one China policy, ' there was almost total silence," Wu said.

In addition, Taiwan has to make clear its objective and build domestic consensus, noted Liu Fu-kuo, a National Chengchi University professor.

"Taiwan needs to make sure whether it wants to bid for observer status in the World Health Assembly (WHA) -- the WHO's governing body, or for full membership under the name Republic of China, or under the name Taiwan. This can affect Taiwan's strategy," he said.