"The delegation members tomorrow will demand that the Executive Yuan draft the official response and correction to the Chinese vice premier's false claim that Beijing has been supervising Taiwan in controlling the SARS outbreak," he said.

Sun said he was confident the country would succeed one day in becoming a WHO observer.

"By witnessing the efforts of the Department of Health and other ministries in the bid this time, I am convinced that the country will achieve the goal of entering the WHO as long as we continue to work for it," he said.

DPP Legislator Chien Chao-tung also questioned Wu's credibility at the health assembly.

"Wu's claim about sending 1,000 sets of SARS kits to Taiwan was a lie," Chien said.

"She even tried to make out that ordinary professional exchanges between medical experts on both sides of the strait before the epidemic were actually evidence of cross-strait cooperation in battling the disease," Chien said.

Chien urged lawmakers from all parties to be more cautious in promoting cross-strait exchanges, which Beijing could describe as evidence of unification.

It's time to stand up to Beijing

As SARS continues to wreak havoc in this nation, China has not only failed to express any regret, but has mobilized countries to shoot down Taiwan's bid to become an observer at the World Health Organization (WHO).

China is indeed at the center of the world. Not only does the Earth revolve around China, but WHO members take their cues from Beijing. The British envy Lord Macartney refused to kowtow to the Manchu Emperor Qian Long -- now everyone scrambles to kowtow to Beijing in order to win business opportunities in China. Hopefully such limitless business opportunities will materialize -- otherwise all the deaths from SARS in this country and elsewhere will have been a waste.

But every defeat is also a revelation. At least two things are clear. One, never believe the chatter about justice and morality coming from the mouths of international political leaders. Two, China will not soften its suppression of Taiwan no matter how hard Taipei tries to appease it.

It is time for President Chen Shui-bian's government to drop any plans to take a conciliatory approach to China and for it to clearly define cross-strait relations as state-to-state in nature. It must also stop dithering over imposing travel restrictions on China.

Since SARS first appeared in Hong Kong, the Department of Health has twice suggested that the Chen government temporary stop all passenger traffic between the two sides of the Taiwan Strait. But the government was under pressure from business interests and was also worried about obstruction by the opposition parties. As a result, it not only ignored the department's suggestion but also tried to curry favor with the pro-unification forces, thereby missing the opportunity to readjust cross-strait relations.

Only after Kinman County, led by the New Party's Lee Chu-feng, twice asked for permission to temporarily halt the "small three links" between Kinmen and Xiamen City, did the Mainland Affairs Council oblige. After finally giving in, the council did not forget to emphasize that the measure was temporary. It appears the government is not only unclear about who its leader is -- Chen, KMT Chairman Lien Chan or PFP Chairman James Soong -- but it also may be confused as to whether is it running a special administrative region of China.

Many other countries have imposed restrictions on travellers from China, but this government has adamantly defended cross-strait exchanges. If the Chen government attaches such great importance to business opportunities in China, how can it blame those countries which kowtowed to China at the World Health Assembly meeting? What reason do we have to accuse others of injustice?

Chen should remember that a leader is not a people-pleaser, much less someone led by the nose by the pro-unification camp. After three years in office, he no longer has any excuse for being soft in the face of opposition arm-twisting. At a time when the country is in the grip of the SARS epidemic and its efforts to join the WHO has been frustrated once again, what is needed is a leader who can lead the entire citizenry, not a politician held hostage by business and pro-unification voters.

China's catastrophe is a catalyst

By Bo Gunnarsson

Despite strong economic development and promises of continued reform, the new Chinese leadership has had a nightmarish beginning.

A heritage of lies threatens not only China's own aspirations of becoming a great power, but over the long term, it also threatens the recovery of the global economy.

Silence, cover-ups and flat denial are still part of the political culture in this, the world's most populous, nation.

The responsibility for the increasingly alarming SARS epidemic rests on the shoulders of this one-party state.

The reasons for this are, in equal parts, incompetence, arrogance and lack of accountability. The top-level generational change has also resulted in neither bureaucracy nor doctors daring to disturb the order or the status quo by exposing an uncomfortable truth. The Communist Party regards bad news as state secrets. This is an instinctive reaction deeply embedded in the party and the power elite.

The international reputation of the PRC has sustained an unprecedented blow, and the World Health Organization's (WHO) temporary blacklisting of Beijing as a travel destination is the ultimate humiliation.

But that is exactly where the key to the virus lies.

The SARS epidemic is a catalyst for change. The leadership has been forced to act. Passivity has been transformed into aggressive activity. From one extreme to another, this new openness has contributed to the panic seen in Beijing.

The real danger is not now, but in the future. Current efforts are primarily aimed at damage control. But this is not enough, and China needs assistance to take the next step.

The public health-care system, previously admired as a model for poorer countries, has not survived the reforms and the so-called socialist market economy. Health care has instead become a class issue, and the free medical care introduced by Mao Zedong is now a privilege enjoyed only by state employees.

In the countryside, health clinics and health services have fallen into decay. Costs are so high that people no longer can afford to see a doctor. The fact that the SARS-virus could kill means little, since 80 percent of the infected recover relatively quickly even without medication. As a result of the silence about SARS imposed on the media, most people see possible symptoms simply as symptoms of any of a number of flu epidemics. The unknown numbers in the ongoing epidemic are, therefore, probably great.

We have experienced this before. The AIDS epidemic in China is another terrifying example of where silence and secrecy may lead. The blood plasma scandal in Henan Province infecting 1 million farmers with HIV could have been avoided with a higher degree of openness.

The SARS virus threatens to trigger a global epidemic, and if the virus were as contagious as the flu, millions of people around the world would have already been hit.

China has misled us all. Authorities refused to inform the WHO, and Guangdong Province kept Hong Kong completely in the dark, despite the fact that the former British colony has been under the jurisdiction of Beijing for five years. First came denials, then standard phrases such as "everything is under control."

The WHO accepted China's unwillingness to cooperate for a full three months. This is a big stain on the otherwise competent leadership of WHO Director-General Gro Harlem-Brundtland. A new, unknown virus that kills, severely crowded living conditions and experiences from earlier flu epidemics are facts that should have caused the global "health police" to threaten with or actually bring in the UN Security Council.

The virus is a potential mass killer.

The most important thing now is to breathe new life into China's health-care system. The existing burden -- AIDS, 170 million hepatitis B infections and much else -- is too heavy, and in the current situation, China is totally incapable of diagnosing and handling new viruses and epidemics, as well as incapable of protecting its own people.

A great expansion of the public health system's capacity is also an absolute requirement if China wants to maintain its high economic growth rate and function as factory to the world. Regardless of income, all Chinese must have access to health care.

It is also important to sanitize the gigantic virus incubator that southern China has become. Millions of people live among pigs, hens, ducks and geese in an environment ideal for any kind of virus. The numbers of mutations and combinations are increasing. Some of them will be even deadlier than SARS. Large amounts of antibiotics in animal feed lead to increased worries about resistant viruses.

SARS is just the beginning of what we can expect to see in the future. This is a biological bomb comparable to any weapon of mass destruction.

If the US and its allies could attack Iraq because former president Saddam Hussein was suspected of possessing nuclear weapons, they should act immediately to disarm this situation.

China is an underdeveloped country and incapable of dealing with this situation on its own. It needs international assistance, both with its health-care system and with "sanitizing" this virus incubator. A new international viral research center must be created in Guangdong Province, the epicenter of the outbreak.

We may also have to consider giving the WHO certain powers to act as a global health police, similar to the UN's weapons inspectors, so that it can act on suspicions of concealed epidemics. These are all big issues that Asian nations should promote internationally and within the UN.

There are many indications that China's new leaders now are prepared to make sacrifices. The SARS epidemic is incredibly costly, and may threaten political stability. It also threatens to isolate the Middle Kingdom, and new viruses and epidemics may even result in the greatest event of all time -- the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing -- being moved.

If any one ever doubted this -- despite 2 million deaths in two earlier epidemics, the Asian flu and the Hong Kong flu -- SARS now gives it to us in black and white: the health of the Chinese people concerns and affects us all.

Helping China is in our own interest as well as a matter of self-preservation.

Bo Gunnarsson is a Tokyo-based freelance writer.

No appeasing China

Taiwan's failure to enter the World Health Organization (WHO) as an observer is not just a result of realism in international politics. It is a reflection of the indifferent minds of politicians from all over the world, who turned a blind eye to the suffering of people in Taiwan in order to appease China -- the country that gave birth to the disease itself.

In this year's World Health Assembly, China's domineering opposition to including Taiwan in the global health network was supported by many countries. These countries thought that by appeasing China's disease concealment and demonstrating their ignorance of the right of Taiwanese people to live healthily, on the one hand, and rejecting Taiwan's request to participate in the enhancement of human health on the other, that SARS would, magically, never pass their national boundaries and threaten the lives of their own citizens.

Inconceivably, those countries believed that the political totem of "one sovereign Chi-nese state" upheld by China could eventually expel the evils that SARS brought upon the Taiwanese and that SARS is only happening in another reality that will never bring them any direct impact on their lives.

It seemed that the late British prime minister Neville Chamberlain's ghost lingered at the WHA through his speech delivered on Sept. 27, 1939: "However much we may sympathize with a small nation confronted by a big and powerful neighbor ? If we have to fight, it must be on larger issues than that."

What happened on Monday was not an unprecedented event in history, however. More than half a century ago, the same theme took place in a different story. In 1936, Adolf Hitler mobilized his troops and claimed victory over the Rhineland under the banner of "reoccupation" -- which differs from "invasion" only in political rhetoric. Though the German army was given strict orders to retreat in case of resistance, the world chose to be silent on German's military engagement.

To quench the tyrants' thirst for blood, Britain and France agreed to concede the Sudetenland within Czechoslovakia to Germany in 1939. Just before the outbreak of war, Western democracies finally realized that appeasement allowed Nazi Germany to become expansionary and unstoppable. However, it was too late.

Globalization entails increasing human contact and interaction. SARS can and will sneak through national boundaries and the international community will have to deal with it sooner or later.

Leaving Taiwan out in the cold is just another concession plan the world seems to enjoy, but it is as dangerous as leaving the Rhineland unguarded in a war against the Nazi blitzkrieg.

Taiwan should not be excluded from the WHO when it is fighting a disease that can threaten the lives of all humans. And Taiwan will keep voicing to the world in the same spirit that British prime minister sir Winston Churchill cried in his speech broadcast Feb. 9, 1941: "Put your confidence in us ? Give us the tools and we will finish the job."

John Wang

TSU legislator

Over the past few years, China has done quite a few shameful things in the UN to bolster its fictional claim to control Taiwan. When a horrible earthquake struck Taiwan in 1999, killing at least 2,000 people, China accepted condolences from the UN for the quake victims even though China itself did not send rescue teams and did not cancel its 50th national day celebrations to mourn the loss of its "Taiwan compatriots."

In the entire history of the UN, China has exercised four Security Council vetoes. Two dealt with resolving conflicts in Guatemala and Macedonia because both Guatemala and Macedonia were willing to have diplomatic relations with Taipei.

And now, China refuses to allow Taiwan to have observer status in the WHO, even though being a sovereign state is not a pre-requisite for such status. China claims that it can provide all of Taiwan's health needs. Yet when epidemics hit Taiwan, Taipei relies on the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for assistance.

It is ironic that while China is paranoid of Taiwan becoming a US protectorate, it is performing actions that effectively makes Taiwan a US health protectorate. Let us not forget that besides a formal declaration of independence, China has threatened to invade Taiwan if some big natural disaster strikes it or if it is occupied by foreign forces.

Allen Timothy Chang

Berkeley, California

War crimes trial gets more time to prove genocide

TRIBUNAL: The case against former Serbian leader Slobodan Milosevic has been strengthened by the arrest of senior figures in the post-communist regime

THE GUARDIAN AND AP , ZAGREB AND BRUSSELS

More than a year into the biggest war crimes trial since the end of World War II, judges in the Hague gave the prosecution 100 more days on Tuesday to make the case for genocide against Slobodan Milosevic.

The prospects for a successful prosecution of the former Serbian leader have shifted dramatically in recent weeks because of the smashing of his information and loyalist networks in Belgrade and the arrest of senior figures in the Serbian regime of the 1990s.

The extension granted Tuesday to Carla del Ponte, the chief prosecutor at the UN's international war crimes tribunal for former Yugoslavia, is likely to herald further courtroom revelations.

She will be trying to seal her argument that Milosevic was personally responsible for the genocide in Bosnia from 1992 to 1995, and for crimes against humanity in Croatia and Kosovo.

He can expect to be jailed for life if convicted. The prosecution case was to have ended this month, but Del Ponte pleaded for a further six months because of time lost through the defendant's repeated absences from court because of illness. The judges refused, but agreed to 100 days before Milosevic can start his defense.

The new deadline will probably force the prosecutors to scale down their plans to bring a further 100 witnesses.

In a written ruling Tuesday, the judges said: "The trial chamber has come to the conclusion that it would be in the interests of justice to allow some variation in the time limit to allow the prosecution more time to call further witnesses it regards as essential."

The circumstances of the Milosevic case have been transformed by the assassination two months ago of the man who overthrew him in October 2000, Serbian prime minister Zoran Djindjic.

According to the Serb authorities, the assassination was plotted by underworld bosses and Milosevic loyalists in the security services, bound together by their hatred of the Hague tribunal and fears that they might end up before its judges if Djindjic lived.

In the purges and mass arrests after the murder, some of Milosevic's closest acolytes were held and questioned. His influential wife, Mirjana Markovic, fled to Moscow to avoid arrest.

She joined her gangster son and Milosevic's brother, a businessman and ex-diplomat.

The detention and interrogation of about 10,000 people lifted the lid on the political crimes of the Milosevic era and may have implications for the trial.

Two of Milosevic's closest former security aides, the paramilitary leader Franko Simatovic and the former state security chief Jovica Stanisic, were also arrested in Belgrade. They were indicted by the Hague and are awaiting transfer to the Netherlands.

Stanisic was an intimate of Milosevic and one of the most powerful men in Serbia during the 1990s. But he split from Milosevic in 1998 over Kosovo and may be persuaded to give evidence against his former boss.

Stanisic has repeatedly made it known that he accepts the jurisdiction of the tribunal.

Some trial watchers believe that the destruction of the Milosevic loyalist network and the severing of his family's links to Belgrade will make the former president's defense more difficult.

Ironically, the three main suspects in the Djindjic murder helped the former prime minister in the arrest of Milosevic in 2001. Two of them were shot dead soon after the murder, and the third, the prime suspect, is on the run.

Del Ponte's hand has also been strengthened by greater cooperation from Belgrade since the murder. She hopes it might lead to the capture of the tribunal's two most wanted men: General Ratko Mladic, the former Bosnian Serb military commander, and his political boss, Radovan Karadzic.

On Tuesday, Zivkovic said that his country would arrest and deliver to the UN tribunal all accused war criminals in Serbia by year's end.

"By the end of the year, we expect to complete our cooperation" with the war crimes court, Zivkovic told reporters during a visit to NATO headquarters in Brussels

NATO Secretary General Lord Robertson stressed that full cooperation with the international court was a "critical condition" for Serbia and Montenegro achieving its goal of entry into NATO's Partnership for Peace program.

Serbia sees the program as a step toward eventual membership in NATO and other western institutions such as the EU after years of isolation under Milosevic's rule.