Trump threat to exit WHO emboldens Xi
STATES AGREE TO INDEPENDENT PROBE OF VIRUS RESPONSE
US President Donald Trump threatened to withdraw altogether from the World Health Organisation, a move that rattled the global fight against the pandemic and bolstered Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s position within the international body.
In a four-page letter detailing his grievances with the WHO, Trump called on the group to “demonstrate independence from China,” renewing a complaint that led him in April to temporarily suspend US funding.
“If the World Health Organisation does not commit to major substantive improvements within the next 30 days, I will make my temporary freeze of United States funding to the World Health Organisation permanent and reconsider our membership in the organisation,” Trump wrote to Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.
Trump made the letter public hours after Xi promised to devote $2 billion toward fighting the pandemic over the next two years while urging greater international cooperation.
Yesterday, Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian said Trump’s letter was “full of insinuations” and aimed “to mislead the public and to achieve the purpose of stigmatising China’s epidemic control efforts while shirking its own responsibility.”
Russia also denounced Trump’s threat. Earlier, WHO states agreed to an independent probe into the UN agency’s coronavirus response. They also agreed to push for equitable access for any treatments or vaccines developed against Covid-19, and urged an international probe into the virus origins.
Ameeting of the World Health Organisation that was supposed to chart a path for the world to combat the coronavirus pandemic instead on Monday turned into a showcase for the escalating tensions between China and the United States over the virus.
President Xi Jinping of China announced at the forum that Beijing would donate $2 billion towards fighting the coronavirus and dispatch doctors and medical supplies to Africa and other countries in developing world.
The contribution, to be spent over two years, amounts to more than twice what the United States had been giving the global health agency before President Donald Trump cut off American funding last month, and it could catapult China to the forefront of global efforts to contain a disease that has claimed at least 322,000 lives.
But it was also seen — particularly by US officials — as an attempt by China to forestall closer scrutiny of whether it hid information about the outbreak to the world. Xi made his announcement by videoconference to the World Health Assembly, an annual decision-making meeting of the WHO that is being conducted virtually this year because of safety considerations during the pandemic.
Trump declined to address the two-day gathering, providing the Chinese president an opening to be one of the first world leaders to address the 194 member states. Late Monday, Trump responded in a scathing letter in which he accused WHO of an “alarming” dependence on China. In the letter, addressed to WHO’s director general, Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the president said, “It is clear the repeated missteps by you and your organisation in responding to the pandemic have been extremely costly for the world.”
The director-general of the WHO, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, nodded to criticism of the organization’s own handling of the early weeks of the outbreak, saying the agency would review “lessons learned” about its global response.
In recent weeks, Chinese leaders and citizens have become increasingly aware of the international criticism and open hostility over China’s initial handling of the outbreak. Top American officials have been scathing, but European leaders have also spoken of mysteries surrounding the outbreak in China that needed to be addressed.
China’s aggressive diplomacy and international anger over exports of Chinese-made medical equipment that turned out to be shoddy have also contributed to the rising tensions. About 100 nations have called for an independent investigation into the origins of the pandemic.