{"id":86912,"date":"2020-05-15T18:43:37","date_gmt":"2020-05-15T13:13:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/?p=86912"},"modified":"2020-08-21T16:05:16","modified_gmt":"2020-08-21T10:35:16","slug":"india-taiwan-attend-world-health-assembly-observer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/india-news\/india-taiwan-attend-world-health-assembly-observer\/","title":{"rendered":"India on Taiwan to attend the World Health Assembly as an observer."},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Foreign Secretary Harsh Vardhan Shringla<\/strong> has participated in at least seven group phone calls with counterparts in the <strong>US, Australia, Japan, New Zealand, South Korea, Vietnam<\/strong> since March 20 as the <strong>international community debates<\/strong> whether to let <strong>Taiwan<\/strong> attend the <strong>World Health Assembly<\/strong> as an observer. Four of these seven countries, <strong>US, Japan, Australia and New Zealand<\/strong> are signatories to a demarche, urging the World Health Organisation to allow Taiwan to be admitted as an observer because its input will be \u201c<strong>meaningful and important<\/strong>\u201d regarding fight against corona virus. Other signatories to this demarche are Canada, France, Germany, the UK. China is vehemently opposing the move.<\/p>\n<p>The <strong>WHO<\/strong> will meet on May 18 to discuss the <strong>COVID-19 pandemic<\/strong> and will hold a vote to determine whether to grant observer status to Taiwan at the WHA, its decision-making body. Taiwan has managed to control the pandemic in an exemplary manner despite being in close proximity to mainland China. There have been only 440 cases and 7 deaths in Taiwan. An Indian official source said a decision will be taken \u201cdepending on how the formal agenda evolves\u201d. \u201cWe can\u2019t say anything more at this point. A decision will be taken closer to the date,\u201d the source said.<\/p>\n<p>Earlier a spokesperson for the <strong>Chinese embassy<\/strong> in New Delhi, underlined the One-China policy. In a statement, the spokeman urged the relevant Indian media to take a correct stance on issues of core interests concerning China\u2019s sovereignty and territorial integrity, adhere to the one-China principle, do not provide platform for \u2018Taiwan independence\u2019 forces, and avoid sending wrong messages to the public.<\/p>\n<p>However, a section in the Indian government advocates as to why Beijing, that wants the world to acknowledge its \u2018one China\u2019 principle, didn\u2019t demonstrate respect for India\u2019s sovereignty when it comes to Kashmir, or building the <strong>China Pakistan Economic Border<\/strong> through <strong>Indian territory occupied by Islamabad<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p>In this context we can also point out to <strong>senior minister Nitin Gadkari\u2019s<\/strong> comment that <strong>Covid-19<\/strong> wasn\u2019t a natural virus but created in a laboratory. However, its not clear whether this was just an off-the-cuff remark or an indicator that the government has an open mind on the origin of the disease. Gadkari&#8217;s remark echos a charge that has been repeatedly made by Washington.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Foreign Secretary Harsh Vardhan Shringla has participated in at least seven group phone calls with counterparts in the US, Australia, Japan, New Zealand, South Korea, Vietnam since March 20 as the international community debates whether to let Taiwan attend the World Health Assembly as an observer.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":86917,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_eb_attr":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true},"categories":[1497,17,1511],"tags":[66136,73635,42,41267,917,95853],"yst_prominent_words":[],"ppma_author":[140543],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/d2r2ijn7njrktv.cloudfront.net\/apnlive\/uploads\/2020\/05\/15184215\/58080970-taiwan-flag-with-india-flag-3d-rendering.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"authors":[{"term_id":140543,"user_id":4,"is_guest":0,"slug":"apnnewsdesk","display_name":"APN Live","avatar_url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/478eacb893eda88aa6ed8d99b005bf58?s=96&r=g"}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86912"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=86912"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86912\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/86917"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=86912"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=86912"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=86912"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=86912"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ppma_author?post=86912"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<!-- html is corrupted -->