US President Donald Trump announced Tuesday that he has ordered his administration to suspend the payment of financial contributions to the United States to the World Health Organization due to the "mismanagement" of the United Nations in the emerging crisis of the Corona virus.
"Today I am ordering the suspension of WHO funding while a review is being conducted to assess the organization's role in severe mismanagement and obfuscation of the outbreak of the Corona virus," Trump said during his daily White House press conference on the Corona epidemic developments.
As the US President directed a lengthy indictment of the United Nations, he said that "the world has received a lot of misinformation about transmission and deaths" resulting from the epidemic.
The Trump administration and its Republican allies had stepped up pressure in Congress a few days ago in the organization, which Washington accused of failing to deal with the Corona crisis.
The organization's director, Yadros Adhanom Gebresus, has responded to US criticism and called on world leaders not to politicize the crisis caused by the outbreak of the Coronavirus, saying he expects continued US funding with traditional support from the Republican and Democratic parties.
But after President Trump's attack on the organization and accusing it of siding with the country from which the epidemic originated, his administration on January 9 sent a detailed "indictment" of the United Nations organization.
A spokesman for the US State Department said that the actions of the World Health Organization had resulted in the loss of human lives, as he put it.
The spokesman added that the organization was late in realizing the seriousness of the crisis, as it had not announced that the new Corona virus was a global epidemic until last March 11, while China informed it of the spread of the virus in December 2019.
He added that his country is very concerned about information that Taiwan informed the health organization as of last December that the virus could be transmitted from one person to another based on the transmission of infection between health workers in the Chinese city of Wuhan, the epicenter of the epidemic.
The American spokesman also expressed concern about not sharing Taiwan information with the global health community, pointing out in this context to the WHO announcement in mid-January that there is no evidence of coronavirus infection between humans.
The State Department spokesman considered that the World Health Organization once again put the policy ahead of the public health service, just as it does about Taiwan's status as an observer in the organization since 2016, he said.
Washington regards Taiwan's response, which had been totally excluded in recent years from the WHO under pressure from Beijing, as ideal in the face of the epidemic, unlike China.
According to official US figures, Washington contributes about $ 400 million, equivalent to 15% of the WHO budget.