TAIPEI: Taiwan’s Premier Jiang Yi-huah on Monday rejected a call from the main opposition party to scrap a nearly completed nuclear power plant, despite planned protests including a hunger strike.
“It would be difficult to stop the construction of the fourth nuclear power plant simply by issuing an administrative order,” Jiang told reporters after a closed-door discussion with Su Tseng-chang, chairman of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP).
The plant outside Taipei has been one of the most contentious projects in Taiwan over the past three decades.
The DPP opposes it on safety grounds while the ruling Kuomintang party says the island will run short of power unless it goes ahead. The visit by Su came on the eve of a planned indefinite protest fast by Lin Yi-hsiung, who was DPP chairman from 1998-2000.
Lin, 72, has since early 2000 devoted himself to battling the island’s nuclear power policy.
A group of his supporters urged fellow Taiwanese to rally behind the activist.
“Mr. Lin will stop taking food from April 22. The outcome of the action will be dictated not only by his resolve but by the determination of you and me — masters of the country,” it said in a statement.
Jiang urged Lin not to cause himself any harm. The government agreed last year to hold a referendum on the new nuclear plant but it has failed to agree the terms of the vote with the opposition.
Anti-nuclear groups pledged to stage rallies and sit-in protests from Tuesday to try to halt the plant’s opening. State-run Taiwan Power Co. (Taipower) says it is 98 percent completed and due to come online in 2015. Construction began in 1999 but the plant has been the subject of intense political wrangling ever since.
Concerns about the island’s nuclear facilities have been mounting since 2011, when the Fukushima nuclear plant in Japan was hit by a tsunami which knocked out power to cooling systems and sent its reactors into meltdown.
Taipower currently operates three nuclear power plants.
Like Japan, the island is regularly hit by earthquakes. In September 1999 a 7.6-magnitude quake killed around 2,400 people in the deadliest natural disaster in the island’s recent history.
Taiwan premier rejects call to scrap new nuclear plant
Taiwan premier rejects call to scrap new nuclear plant
Ethiopia accuses Eritrea of arming rebels in escalating war of words
- The charge by Ethiopia’s federal police escalates a feud between Ethiopia and Eritrea
- The two countries fought a three-year border war that broke out in 1998
ADDIS ABABA: Ethiopian police said they had seized thousands of rounds of ammunition sent by Eritrea to rebels in Ethiopia’s Amhara region, an allegation Eritrea dismissed as a falsehood intended to justify starting a war.
The charge by Ethiopia’s federal police escalates a feud between Ethiopia and Eritrea, longstanding foes who reached a peace deal in 2018 that has since given way to renewed threats and acrimony.
The police said in a statement late on Wednesday they had seized 56,000 rounds of ammunition and arrested two suspects this week in the Amhara region, where Fano rebels have waged an insurgency since 2023.
“The preliminary investigation conducted on the two suspects who were caught red-handed has confirmed that the ammunition was sent by the Shabiya government,” the statement said, using a term for Eritrea’s ruling party.
Eritrea’s Information Minister Yemane Gebremeskel told Reuters that Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed’s Prosperity Party (PP) was looking for a pretext to attack.
“The PP regime is floating false flags to justify the war that it has been itching to unleash for two long years,” he said.
In an interview earlier this week with state-run media, Eritrean President Isaias Afwerki said the Prosperity Party had declared war on his country. He said Eritrea did not want war, but added: “We know how to defend our nation.”
The two countries fought a three-year border war that broke out in 1998, five years after Eritrea won its independence from Ethiopia. They signed a historic agreement to normalize relations in 2018 that won Ethiopia’s Abiy the Nobel Peace Prize the following year. Eritrean troops then fought in support of Ethiopia’s army during a 2020-22 civil war in Ethiopia’s northern Tigray region.
But relations soured after Asmara was frozen out of the peace deal that ended that conflict. Since then, Eritrea has bristled at repeated public declarations by Abiy that landlocked Ethiopia has a right to sea access — comments many in Eritrea, which lies on the Red Sea, view as an implicit threat of military action.
Abiy has said Ethiopia does not seek conflict with Eritrea and wants to address the issue of sea access through dialogue.
