Taiwan’s Foriegn Minister Offer Resign Over Typhoon Blunder

TAIPEI : Taiwan’s foreign minister has offered to resign for turning down overseas aid after Typhoon Morakot struck the island earlier this month, a report said on Wednesday.

Francisco Ou verbally tendered his resignation to President Ma Ying-jeou during a routine briefing on Monday, the local China Times reported, citing unnamed sources. The presidential office declined to comment on the report.

Ou was the fourth senior cabinet official who offered to quit amid public anger over the government’s slow response to the deadly typhoon.

Cabinet Secretary General Hsueh Hsiang-chuan had incurred public wrath after angrily justifying dining with his family at a five-star hotel on August 8, the day Morakot struck, saying it was Father’s Day in Taiwan and “not out of line”.

Defence Minister Chen Chao-min came under fire for deploying too few troops during the initial days of the rescue operation while Ou’s deputy Andrew Hsia has taken the blame for a decision, later overturned, to refuse foreign aid.

Ou and the others remain in their jobs pending an expected cabinet reshuffle next month, the report said.

The government on Tuesday confirmed that 461 people were killed while 192 were missing when the typhoon lashed the island with a record three metres (118 inches) of rain, submerging houses and streets and destroying bridges.

Morakot was the worst-ever typhoon to strike Taiwan, Ma has said, saying the scale of the damage was more severe than a 1959 typhoon that killed 667 people and left around 1,000 missing.

The deadliest natural disaster in the island’s history was a 7.6-magnitude quake that claimed around 2,400 lives in September 1999.