US President Donald Trump has threatened to suspend the payment of US financial contributions to the World Health Organization, denouncing the way the UN is managing to tackle the emerging Corona epidemic.
"We will suspend (pay) the funds earmarked for the World Health Organization," Trump said at his daily White House press conference on developments in the epidemic in the United States, without elaborating.
Trump said the organization may have known more than it initially disclosed, saying it "seems very biased towards China ... this is not right."
Trump also added that the international organization was late in issuing the Corona virus warning, and criticized its travel ban.
However, a few minutes later, the US President retracted this announcement by saying that he had not decided to suspend the payment, but only intended to study this possibility. "I am not saying that I will, but rather we will study this possibility," he said.
The United States is the largest contributor to the World Health Organization.
Trump launched a sharp attack on the United Nations on Tuesday morning, writing in a Tweet on Twitter that "the World Health Organization has really failed ... oddly, it is largely funded by the United States, but its focus is on China."
The US President's attack on the United Nations came at a time when the death toll of Covid-19 in the United States exceeded 11,000, while the number of people infected with the epidemic in this country reached more than 385,000.