Taitung farm fights A(H1N1) outbreak
　

'FARMAGGEDON': Pig farmers countrywide were on high alert, with emergency measures kicking in after news broke that swine flu had struck more than 150 pigs

STAFF WRITER, WITH CNA
Friday, Nov 06, 2009, Page 1

More than 150 pigs at a Taitung farm have tested positive for the A(H1N1) virus, marking the country’s first case of pigs being diagnosed with the influenza strain, Council of Agriculture (COA) officials confirmed yesterday.

The Taitung County Livestock Disease Control Center began testing pigs on Oct. 27 after learning that about 160 out of approximately 3,000 animals at the farm had begun experiencing symptoms such as coughing, runny noses and diarrhea 10 days earlier.

Huang Jin-cheng (黃金城), chief of the COA’s Animal Health Research Institute, told a press conference that the initial investigation indicated the virus had passed from an infected person to a pig and then spread throughout the herd.

The livestock disease center took immediate action to contain the virus and began testing workers on the farm to determine the origin of the outbreak, he said.

Huang said that the swine flu virus is not transmitted by food, so consumers should not fear contracting swine flu by eating pork or pork products. He said it was safe to eat pig products that have been properly handled and cooked.

Canada, Argentina, Australia, Britain, Ireland, Norway, Japan and Iceland have also reported cases of swine flu in pigs, Huang said.

Hsu Tien-lai (??, director of the COA’s Department of Animal Industry, said infected pigs would not be medicated because they should recover in three to seven days.

There is no evidence that the animals can transmit swine flu to humans and there have been no reported cases of the virus mutating into a form that can do so, Hsu said.

The infections put pig farmers on high alert, with emergency measures kicking in to prevent the outbreak from spreading. Most of the nation’s pig farms are located in central and southern Taiwan, including Yunlin County, home to some 1.45 million pigs, Tainan County, with 790,000 pigs and Kaohsiung County with 400,000.

Lu Cheng-chang (呂政璋), director of Yunlin County’s Agricultural Affairs Bureau, said he had instructed the county’s pig farms and meat markets to redouble their efforts to prevent an epidemic.

He said no pigs in Yunlin County had contracted the virus as of yesterday.

Poultry and livestock farmers in Yunlin were told to be vaccinated against swine flu immediately.

Centers for Disease Control Director Steve Kuo (郭旭崧) confirmed that the strain in Taitung was the new strain of A(H1N1) that has caused a global scare in recent months.

Kuo urged the public not to panic as “it is not news that the virus exists in pigs.”

“It will not increase the A(H1N1) threat we are facing,” he said.

Court convicts 23 US agents in CIA’s Milan kidnapping

AFP, MILAN, ITALY
Friday, Nov 06, 2009, Page 1

An Italian judge convicted 23 US and two Italian secret agents or military officers for the CIA’s kidnapping of an Egyptian cleric in 2003, as Washington expressed dismay over the ruling.

The CIA’s Milan station chief at the time, Robert Seldon Lady, was sentenced on Wednesday to eight years in prison and the other Americans to five years, all in their absence at the landmark trial.

The two Italians were given three-year prison terms after the first trial involving the transfer of a “war on terror” suspect by CIA operatives thought to have sent scores of people to countries that are known to practice torture.

The CIA chief for Italy at the time, Jeffrey Castelli, and the then-head of Italian military intelligence SISMI, Nicolo Pollari, were protected by state secrecy rules, while two other American defendants benefited from diplomatic immunity, Judge Oscar Magi said.

US State Department spokesman Ian Kelly said that Washington was “disappointed by the verdicts against the Americans and Italians” in the trial.

“Our view is the Italian court has no jurisdiction over Lieutenant Colonel [Joseph] Romano and should have immediately dismissed the charges,” Pentagon Press Secretary Geoff Morrell said.

“Now that they have not, we will, of course, explore what options we have going forward,” he said.

Prosecutor Armando Spataro hailed the ruling, saying the trial, which opened in June 2007, had demonstrated “the truth of the investigation.”

Osama Mustafa Hassan, an imam better known as Abu Omar, was snatched from a Milan street on Feb. 17, 2003 in an operation coordinated by the CIA and SISMI.

The radical Islamist opposition figure, who enjoyed political asylum in Italy, was allegedly taken to the Aviano Air Base, a US military installation in northeastern Italy, then flown to the US base in Ramstein, Germany, and on to Cairo, where he says he was tortured.

The “extraordinary rendition” program was set up by the administration of then-US president George W. Bush in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the US.

DPP questions premier’s links to felon
　

REFORMED CHARACTER?: Convicted gangster Chiang Ching-liang said he had paid his debt to society and was now an ordinary man trying to make an honest living
　

By Jenny W. hsu
STAFF REPORTER
Friday, Nov 06, 2009, Page 3

The Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) yesterday questioned links between Nantou’s county chief, the premier and a convicted felon.

Premier Wu Den-yih’s (吳敦義) alleged association with a former Nantou County gang boss shows the Chinese Nationalist Party’s (KMT) rallying cry for clean governance was nothing but hot air, said DPP Spokesman Tsai Chi-chang (蔡其昌), demanding Wu explain his connections with a twice-convicted murderer or resign from his post.

Local media reported Wu and his wife were caught on camera vacationing in Bali, Indonesia, with Nantou County Magistrate Lee Chao-ching (李朝卿) and Chiang Ching-liang (江欽良), reportedly a crime boss in the county.

DPP Legislator Chen Ting-fei (陳亭妃) said the 43 year-old Chiang was convicted of murder for slaying a Changhua gangster and a Nantou County council member in 1983 and 1985 respectively. He fled from prison in 1989 during a hospital visit and was recaptured a year later, she said, adding that his rap sheet included more than 30 counts of illegal arms sales, extortion, assault and robbery.

In 2000, Chiang was released on early parole from his 20-year sentence and has since dominated the night market scene in Nantou.

While Wu dubbed Chiang a “changed man” who has turned his back on crime and dedicated the last decade of his life to charity work, DPP lawmakers said he was still heavily involved in underground syndicates and that Wu should step down over his links with Chiang.

DPP candidate for the Nantou County commissioner seat Lee Wen-chung (李文忠) also accused Lee Chao-ching of giving favors to Chiang through a monopoly on the gravel business in the county.

“Lee Chao-ching has claimed the Bali trip was purely a fact finding mission to help Nantou develop its tourism. If that was the case, why didn’t he apply for official leave instead of taking the days off as personal vacation time,” Lee Wen-chung said yesterday.

Tsai said Wu should address a rumor that Chiang’s people physically assaulted Non-Partisan Party candidate Chen Chen-sheng (陳振盛) and Chiang’s association with the local gravel industry.

The Ministry of the Interior will never win the fight against crime if the premier is friendly with gangsters, Tsai said.

Lee Chao-ching at a separate press conference yesterday denied all allegations on Chiang’s reported involvement in the gravel business and stressed all Nantou County gravel business tenders are conducted by transparent public bidding.

Meanwhile, in an interview with the Liberty Times (the Taipei Times’ sister newspaper), Chiang defended himself, saying he had paid his debt to society and is now an ordinary man trying to make an honest living and contribute to his community.

“This whole thing was staged by the DPP as an election maneuver, digging up mistakes I made more than 20 years ago,” he said.

Yesterday, Wu, who usally fields questions from reporters in person, issued a short statement instead.

In the statement, Wu said he has been a person of integrity during his political career of more than 30 years and his activities stand up to scrutiny.

Wu said he considers parolees to be normal people and believes they should receive encouragement and support from society if they sincerely repent.

KMT caucus deputy secretary-general Lin Hung-chih (林鴻池) urged the DPP to present evidence to back its accusations and take the case to court instead of spreading “rumors” to sabotage Wu and Lee Chao-ching.
　

Risk of conflict in Taiwan Strait reduced: US admiral
　

TARGETING UNCLE SAM: The US’ top military officer said China was developing military technologies focused on US capabilities, particularly aircraft carriers
　

By William Lowther
STAFF REPORTER , WASHINGTON
Friday, Nov 06, 2009, Page 3

The US’ top military officer, Admiral Michael Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said on Wednesday that tensions between China and Taiwan had “gone down” in recent months and that he believed the danger of armed conflict had been reduced.

Asked at a Washington conference on military leadership if China was still focused on intimidating Taiwan, he replied: “What I’ve seen with the election of a new government in Taiwan is that there is a more stable relationship between Taipei and Beijing.”

“In that regard, it seems to be moving in the right direction. We are still very clear on our one China policy in that what we want to see is a peaceful resolution between Taiwan and China over time,” he said.

Mullen said that the US had obligations to support Taiwan, that the US had fulfilled those obligations in the past and that “we will continue to do so.”

But turning to the longer term future he said that while “most of all” Washington wanted to see the China-Taiwan situation resolved peacefully

“When we think about conflict in that part of the world, that’s often very much on people’s minds,” he said.

The admiral stressed that the US-China military-to-military relationship — only recently restored after a long break triggered by US weapons sales to Taiwan — was of great importance.

He said that China was developing military technologies “very focused” on US capabilities, particularly aircraft carriers.

In addition, Mullen said, Beijing was building ballistic missiles, space and anti-satellite weapons “and they are heavily engaged in the cyber world and it’s a concern.”

“So, that issue is certainly one that we consistently address ... I’m just hopeful that we can have enough of a relationship with their military leaders to be able to talk with them about these challenges and address them and listen and also listen to their concerns,” Mullen said.

“On the one hand, they’re a growing country and certainly they have growing global requirements, even growing regional requirements,” he said. “I’m hoping that we can have enough of a relationship with them that we can avoid any serious conflict in the future. It’s a very stable region, generally speaking.”

Experimental drug saves baby in world first: doctors
　

MIRACLE: Doctors raced against time to get approval to use a drug that had never been used on humans to treat a baby suffering from a previously incurable condition

AFP, MELBOURNE
Friday, Nov 06, 2009, Page 5

“The team ... managed to get this therapy from bench to bedside in about two weeks, a process which normally takes several years.”— Alex Veldman, neo-natologist
　

An Australian baby has become the first person to be cured of a rare and often fatal brain-­poisoning condition thanks to an experimental treatment tested only on mice, doctors said yesterday.

The child, known only as “Baby Z,” was born with molybdenum cofactor deficiency, a genetic condition in which a build-up of toxic sulphite causes fits and brain damage, typically killing victims within a few months of birth.

“This is a first life-saving treatment for this fatal disease with global implications,” said neo-­natologist Alex Veldman, calling it a “special first-time cure.”

Veldman said Baby Z started having seizures within 60 hours of her birth in May last year, prompting her family to appeal to a biochemist to help treat the previously incurable condition.

The chemist, Rob Gianello, discovered an experimental drug which had been successfully used on mice by a German doctor, Gunther Schwarz, but had never been tested on humans.

As Schwarz couriered his entire stock of the compound from Cologne to Melbourne, doctors were in a race against time to get ethics approval from the hospital and a court order clearing its use, with Baby Z worsening by the hour.

“The team ... managed to get this therapy from bench to bedside in about two weeks, a ­process which normally takes several years,” Veldman said.

Within hours of receiving her first dose of the drug, cyc­lic pyranopterin monophosphate (cPMP), Baby Z’s sulphite levels plunged by more than two-thirds, and were at normal levels within about three days.

“A few days after starting the patient on cPMP, the baby’s level of alertness improved significantly and the twitching and startling reactions decreased,” Veldman said.

“A [scan] performed three weeks after start of cPMP substitution showed a 90 percent reduction of seizure activity if compared to ... prior to treatment,” he said.

The baby’s neurological development is delayed due to brain damage suffered in the month before she received treatment, but her mother said she had now started speaking and was physically active.

Don’t concede more on Taiwan
　

By Hisahiko Okazaki
Friday, Nov 06, 2009, Page 8

For those who are concerned that democratic Taiwan should continue to have the freedom to choose its own future, US President Barack Obama’s upcoming visit to Beijing brings back the memory of a regrettable episode during former US president Bill Clinton’s visit to China in June 1998.

Early in the spring of that year there were signs that the US government would assure China that Washington would not defend Taiwan if it declared independence. On March 13, Joseph Nye proposed in a Washington Post op-ed piece to eliminate the ambiguity in the US position by stating that the US would not recognize or defend Taiwan if it were to declare independence.

I argued against such a policy in an op-ed piece in the Japan Times and directly to the US assistant secretary of state Stanley Roth in Tokyo when he was accompanying US secretary of state Madeline Albright on her way to Beijing to prepare for Clinton’s visit.

My argument was as follows: “Suppose Taiwan declared independence and China used forced, believing in the American statement of its position, I wonder whether the American public and the Congress would acquiesce in abandoning a free and democratic Taiwan to China. If not, it is tantamount to tricking China into a war. It would be similar to how the Korean War began. The United States declared that South Korea is outside its defense line, but intervened when the North launched an attack, having possibly believed in your words.”

I do not know whether my arguments had any influence, but there were no statements about not defending Taiwan then. On the eve of Clinton’s visit, however, stories began to circulate that he was going to state a “three nos” policy: The US would oppose Taiwan independence, oppose a “one China, one Taiwan” policy and oppose Taiwan’s formal membership in state-based international organizations.

Fortunately, there was no mention of “three nos” in Clinton’s joint press conference with the Chinese president Jiang Zeming (江澤民), nor in Clinton’s major policy speech at Peking University. Then the volte-face came. On a visit to Shanghai, Clinton announced the “three nos” during a dialogue with Chinese intellectuals on a TV show.

Although the US Congress quickly rejected Clinton’s commitment through resolutions of both Houses, China may still view his remarks as an official commitment of a US president and may quite likely expect Obama to reconfirm the three nos.

It is not difficult to suspect that there were some disgraceful deals behind the scenes. The date of Clinton’s visit, to start with, is believed to have been sought by the US to turn attention away from a domestic scandal, and that indebted the US to announce the three nos, while bypassing Japan and South Korea to make the longest trip Clinton paid to a single country. In addition, the topics of the Shanghai TV interview, which was originally scheduled to focus on cultural affairs, appeared to have been changed on short notice.

Through the 37-year history of US-China engagement, the US has consistently retreated in the war of semantics about Taiwan. The US has been unable to muster points against the steel wall of one-party dictatorship. It lost inch-by-inch every time. Each time, however, Washington reassured the US public that its position hadn’t changed.

How deceptively the US position had eroded can be seen in the comments made by Clinton. He began his remarks on the “three nos” by stating that he was reiterating US policy on Taiwan but not specifying the time of the previous remarks, whether it was during his meetings in Beijing or much earlier. Then national security adviser Sandy Berger said the US had simply repeated its basic position.

In fact, the US has consistently shifted its position. It started with an admirably objective statement by then national security adviser Henry Kissinger in 1972: “The US acknowledges that all Chinese on either side of the Taiwan Strait maintain there is but one China and that Taiwan is a part of China.”

This was cleverly phrased but would have become obsolete were Taiwan to declare independence. The retreat from this position began in 1983 by denying the intention of pursuing a policy of “two Chinas” or “one China, one Taiwan.”

The word “pursuing” implies planning, working for and encouraging, but it does not prevent the US from accepting a fait accompli of Taiwan’s independence. However, there is a more clear implication in the term “not support” used during Clinton’s 1998 visit, which was well explained in Washington Post editorials as among the options that the Taiwanese eventually might choose.

The US assured Taiwan at the time that “not support” did not mean “oppose.” In fact, “oppose” was the term sought by China through former US president George W. Bush’s administration. China boasts domestically that it has won the commitment from the US, but there is no diplomatic record to testify to such a position.

As for Obama’s trip, it would be best not to go beyond the three joint communiques that have long defined US-China relations. The bottom line should be not to reconfirm the “three nos,” which were already denied by Congress. The Obama administration should never accept a change from “not support” to “oppose.”

Incidentally, the Japanese government, perhaps uncharacteristically, has never conceded an inch in the past 37 years from its stand to “understand and respect the Chinese position.”

Hisahiko Okazaki has served as Japanese ambassador to Saudi Arabia and Thailand. He now runs the Okazaki Institute, a think tank in Tokyo. This piece was first published in ACFR NewsGroup No.1528, an e-mail publication of The American Committees on Foreign Relations, on Oct. 27.