The World Health Organization (WHO) reiterated its one-China
policy, stressing that it would stick to that policy in its global
bird flu containment work.
The WHO had always pursued a one-China policy and believed
Taiwan was a province of China, spokesman Gregory Hartl told a
press conference in the Palace of Nations on Friday.
"Look at the map, you can see that the mainland and Taiwan are
of the same color," the spokesman said, in reply to a question on
the spread of bird flu across the Taiwan Straits.
The WHO Web site has maps showing countries with confirmed human
cases of the H5N1 strain of bird flu marked in yellow.
Taiwan, like China's mainland, is also marked in yellow, though
the island has no human cases of the H5N1 strain.
The spokesman said that China had a seat in the WHO, and that
seat could also represent Taiwan since it was part of China.
(Xinhua News Agency March 13, 2006)
