Beijing: 'politics, Not Health' Drive Taiwan WHO Bid

Taiwan will fail in its bid to take part in a key meeting of the World Health Organisation (WHO) amid efforts to rein in the coronavirus as its efforts are not based on health concerns but politics, Beijing said on Friday.

Taiwan has been lobbying to attend, as an observer, the May 18-19 gathering of the WHO's decision-making body, the World Health Assembly (WHA), and has won high-level support from the United States and several of its allies, including Japan.

Beijing, under its "one China" policy, considers Taiwan ineligible for state-to-state relations or membership of bodies such as the WHO.

Six of WHO's 194 member states had proposed inviting Taiwan as an observer to the WHA ministerial-level meeting, WHO's principal legal officer, Steven Solomon, told a UN briefing in Geneva on Friday.

WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom Gheybreyesus has "conditional discretion" to issue invitations, provided that they are consistent with rules set out in WHO's constitution and the policies decided by the World Health Assembly, Solomon said.

"The only body with authority, control and power is the assembly itself. It's not the director-general, it's not the secretariat of WHO," he added.

Taiwan's exclusion from the WHO, due to the objections of Beijing, angered Taipei, which says this has created a dangerous gap in the global fight against the coronavirus.

Speaking at a daily news briefing in Beijing, Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said Taiwan's ruling Democratic Progressive Party was trying to use the pandemic for its own political purposes.

"Its so-called attempts to get into the WHO and participate in the WHA are absolutely not for the health and well-being of Taiwan's people but are through-and-through political manipulation, and will not succeed," she said.

Both Taiwan and the United States say that Tedros has the power, should he so wish, to invite Taiwan to the WHA. But diplomatic sources in Taiwan say that in practice he is unlikely to do so if Beijing does not approve.

Taiwan's Mainland Affairs Council said late on Thursday that health was a basic human right and China was "using politics to infringe upon health and human rights".

The WHO should "not be manipulated by a single country's political position" and at this time of pandemic should protect the health and safety of people around the world, it said. (Reuters)