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)