Taipei, Jan. 18 (CNA) The Paris Club has approached Taiwan for help in canceling Haiti's international debt after the Caribbean country was ravaged by a magnitude 7 earthquake last week, sources familiar with the case told the Central News Agency Monday.
France, which chairs the group of financial officials from 19 wealthy countries that provides services such as debt relief and debt cancellation to indebted countries, has contacted Taiwan about the matter, sources said, noting that the debt that Haiti owes to Taiwan is usually donations in the forms of various collaboration programs.
According to a media report, Christine Lagarde, the French minister of economy, industry and employment, said last Friday she has contacted members of the Paris Club to discuss speeding up debt relief for Haiti.
Lagarde said she was also asking Taiwan and Venezuela, non-Paris Club members but major creditors of Haiti, to help in the debt relief effort.
"I am asking two other states, Taiwan and Venezuela... to also envisage the cancellation of their debt to Haiti... as a collective effort. This would be a good step for this country," Lagarde said.
The club said on its Web site that it had decided to cancel US$62.73 million of the country's debt in July 2009, and is committed on a bilateral and voluntary basis to cancel an additional US$152 million.
A spokesman of Taiwan's Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) declined to comment on the report but said the government is planning to further review the contents and details of various bilateral cooperation programs with the Haitian government.
Civic groups and nongovernmental organizations in Taiwan have mobilized a donation effort that has collected 84 tons of relief meterial, including food, water, medical supplies and lighting equipment, worth over NT$12 million.
Seventy tons of these humanitarian supplies, the first shipment of Taiwan's nongovernmental relief supplies to Haiti, were scheduled to be shipped to Dominican Republic by a FedEx air cargo charter at 8:30 p.m. Monday.
On Sunday, Taiwan's first search and rescue team, which arrived in the disaster zone by land after being stuck in the Dominican Republic because of air traffic congestion in Port-au-Prince, successfully rescued a survivor on the second day of its operations.
The survivor was a Haitian security guard at the United Nations Peecekeeping Force's police dormitory who had been buried under the rubble for five days before being rescued.