China, Russia, U.S. clash over pandemic responses
TANZANIA, TANZANIA — China, the United States and Russia butted heads at the United Nations on Thursday over responsibility for the pandemic that has interrupted the world, trading allegations about who mishandled and politicized the virus in one of the few real-time exchanges among top officials at this year’s Covid-distanced UN General Assembly meeting.
The remarks at the UN Security Council’s ministerial meeting on the assembly’s sidelines came just after UN Secretarygeneral Antonio Guterres decried the lack of international co-operation in tackling the still “out-of-control” coronavirus.
The sharp exchanges, at the end of a virtual meeting on “Post COVID-19 Global Governance,” reflected the deep divisions among the three vetowielding council members that have escalated since the virus first emerged in the Chinese city of Wuhan in January. They also crackled with an energy and action that the prerecorded set pieces of leader speeches at the virtual meeting have thus far lacked.
Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi, speaking first, stressed the importance of Uncentred multilateralism and alluded to countries — including the U.S. — opting out of making a COVID-19 vaccine a global public good available to people everywhere.
“In such a challenging moment, major countries are even more duty-bound to put the future of humankind first, discard Cold War mentality and ideological bias and come together in the spirit of partnership to tide over the difficulties,” Wang said.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said the pandemic and its “common misfortune did not iron out interstate differences, but to the contrary deepened them.”
“In a whole number of countries there is a temptation to look abroad for those who are responsible for their own internal problems,” he said. “And we see attempts on the part of individual countries to use the current situation in order to move forward their narrow interests of the moment in order to settle the score with the undesirable governments or geopolitical competitors.”
All that was too much for the United States’ UN ambassador, Kelly Craft, who opened her remarks late in the meeting with a blunt rejoinder.
“Shame on each of you. I am astonished and disgusted by the content of today’s discussion,” Craft said. She said some representatives were “squandering this opportunity for political purposes.”
“President Trump has made it very clear: We will do whatever is right, even if it’s unpopular, because, let me tell you what, this is not a popularity contest.”