Coronavirus: Trump threatens to suspend US contribution to WHO

Text by: RFI Follow

The American president denounces the management of the current pandemic by the organization and an attitude in his eyes too favorable to Beijing.

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" We will suspend [the payment] of funds intended for the WHO ", declared Tuesday the president of the United States at his daily press conference from the White House .

But Donald Trump finally backed down a few minutes later, saying he only wanted to explore this possibility. " I'm not saying I'm going to do it, but we're going to look into it ." " Everything seems very favorable to China, it is not acceptable, " he added, without further details.

We pay the most important part of their budget, and yet they criticized the closing of the borders when I introduced it ...

Donald trump

The Republican billionaire wrote a particularly virulent tweet against the organization on Tuesday morning. " WHO has really crashed ," he wrote. “ Strangely, they are largely funded by the United States and yet very focused on China. We will take a close look at the matter. "

The WHO really blew it. For some reason, funded largely by the United States, yet very China centric. We will be giving that a good look. Fortunately I rejected their advice on keeping our borders open to China early on. Why did they give us such a faulty recommendation?

The African Union reacts

The president of the African Union (AU) Commission, Moussa Faki Mahamat, defended WHO on Wednesday against the attacks of the American president. " I am surprised to learn that the United States government is campaigning against the world leaders of the WHO, " Faki wrote on his Twitter account, adding that the AU " fully " supports the director general of the WHO, the Ethiopian Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus. In his message on Twitter on Wednesday, Faki called for more international cooperation to deal with the coronavirus.

In the United States, the number of cases of contamination with the new coronavirus is approaching the threshold of 400,000. Nearly 2,000 additional deaths were reported on Tuesday, April 7, in the country, a record on a single day.

(With AFP)

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• United States
• Coronavirus
• Health and Medicine

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