Trump gave WHO list of demands, walked

Biden to rejoin, but inherits fractured relationship

GENEVA — In late May, the U.S. ambassador in Geneva, Andrew Bremberg, went on a rescue mission to the World Health Organization headquarters. He told its directorgeneral, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, that despite weeks of threats that President Donald Trump would quit the health organization, the relationship could still be salvaged.

B re m b e rg handdelivered a list of seven demands that U. S. officials saw as the beginning of discreet discussions.

Hours later, Trump took the lectern outside the White House and blew it all up, announcing that the United States would leave the WHO. The announcement blindsided his own diplomats and Tedros alike.

If Trump thought Tedros would relent under the pressure of a U.S. withdrawal, he was wrong. The WHO leader has refused to make concessions or counteroffers, according to American and Western officials. And Trump ultimately made good on his promise to abandon a health agency that the United States helped form a half-century ago.

With Trump’s election defeat, President- elect Joe Biden appears ready to rejoin the global health body. But he will inherit a fractured relationship and must quickly make decisions about how to overhaul an organization that even staunch supporters say is in dire need of change.

While the Trump administration’s demands are now moot, they offer a glimpse into both the growing U. S. frustration with the WHO and Trump’s personal grievances. And as Biden signals a return to multinational diplomacy, the Trump administration’s demands offer a behindthe-scenes glimpse of the deal- making of a president who favored aggressive, unpredictable moves over more conventional negotiations.

As has often been the case during Trump’s presidency, his administration was divided, current and former officials said.

Diplomats and veteran health officials said the list contained reasonable requests that might have been easily negotiated through normal channels. ( The WHO has since made some changes anyway.) But it also contained politically sensitive, if not inappropriate, demands.

“It doesn’t seem to reveal a clear strategic vision,” said Gian Luca Burci, a former counsel to the health organization who reviewed the list for The New York Times.

Experts said it was easy to see why, in the face of Trump’s withdrawal and his efforts to deflect blame for the pandemic, Tedros chose not to negotiate.

“It was an enormous backfire, and it was bound to be,” added Lawrence Gostin, a Georgetown University law professor and longtime WHO adviser who also reviewed the list. “It wasn’t a negotiation. It was blackmail.”

The State Department did not directly address its proposed terms but said it had acted in good faith in calling for needed changes.

“At a critical moment when the WHO leadership had the opportunity to rebuild trust among some of its critical member states, it chose a path that did the very opposite and demonstrated its lack of independence from the Chinese Communist Party,” Bremberg, the U.S. ambassador in Geneva, said in a statement.

The WHO did not comment. Several current and former Trump administration officials and Western diplomats spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to disclose private conversations.