Tuvalu's U.N. Ambassador Enele Somoaga noted the council's swift action on North Korea's recent ballistic missile tests, and its nuclear program, and urged council members to deal similarly with "the threat of the use of military force in the Taiwan Strait."
"The irony of the situation is the fact that there is no effective political mechanism to resolving this particular dispute, as we all know the 23 million people of Taiwan are not represented in this body, despite their contributions to international cooperation," he said.
"Surely the U.N. cannot fail its collective responsibily to work peace by ignoring this threat," Somoaga said.
Chinese diplomat Liu Pei expressed regret that a small number of countries raised the Taiwan issue.
"I wonder if it did this at the instigation of others or out of other designs," he said.
"The Chinese delegation wishes to reiterate that there is but one China in the world and that Taiwan is an inseparable part of the People's Republic of China," Liu said. "I wish to emphasize that the Taiwan question is entirely an internal affair of China and bears no relation whatsoever to the prevention of armed conflict."
So the UN takes no interest in internal matters? So what about Darfur? And Congo? And Bosnia? And the status of Hizbollah in Lebanon?
Since when does the UN only get interested in formal inter-state issues?
But China does give the game away when they insist that China's actions against Taiwan won't amount to "armed conflict" under the rules of the vaunted international community. I really wouldn't be shocked if China uses poison gas when they attack Taiwan to gum up rear areas and airfields. After all, just "testing" such weapons on your own territory is just an internal matter, right?
To answer the Tuvalu ambassador's question of whether the U.N. can fail its collective responsibily to work for peace by ignoring the threat to Taiwan that China poses, why yes it can! This is the UN, remember?
