US, China trade barbs at UN, amid spat over pandemic

Representatives from China and the United States have traded barbs at a United Nations Security Council meeting, as the US continues to blame China for the coronavirus pandemic without evidence.

According to Press TV, during a Security Council meeting on Tuesday, US Ambassador to the UN Kelly Craft called on China “to validate its claims of global leadership in combating COVID-19” by supporting “a resolution to allow the UN to combat this pandemic by delivering life-saving aid cross-border” into Syria.

China’s UN Ambassador Zhang Jun hit back by calling on Washington to focus on global efforts to fight the pandemic and “stop playing political games and really focus on saving lives and stop diverting from its own responsibilities to other countries.”

The US President Donald Trump administration has been suggesting that the coronavirus was artificially synthesized at a lab in China and that Beijing failed to act promptly when its own outbreak began late last year. China has rejected the allegations.

The tensions between the two veto-wielding powers have hampered a months-long attempt by the Security Council to agree on a resolution backing UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres’ call for a global ceasefire so the world can focus on fighting the pandemic.

Meanwhile, the World Health Organization (WHO) on Tuesday passed a resolution on the need to investigate the global response to the coronavirus pandemic.

“We want accountability more than anyone,” Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the WHO’s Director-General, said. “We will continue providing strategic leadership to co-ordinate the global response” to the pandemic.

He made no reference to a letter to the WHO by Trump in which the US president threatened to reconsider America’s membership in the international body, as well as to permanently halt funding for the WHO if it did not commit to unspecified improvements within 30 days.

Trump has called the WHO a “puppet of China.” The UN organization has praised China’s response to its outbreak, which was the world’s first.

ME