Geneva (AFP)
The United States twisted on Monday the "failure" of the WHO, also described as "puppet of China" by Donald Trump, at the annual meeting of the organization during which the world asked for a " evaluation "of the international response to the pandemic.
"I am not happy with the World Health Organization," stormed the American president from the White House. "They are a puppet of China".
Asked about the future of the American contribution to this organization, which he announced the suspension in mid-April, Mr. Trump remained elusive. "We will make a decision soon," he said. Washington was the first donor to the UN agency.
It held its first virtual World Health Assembly (WHA) on Monday, which should finally end in the evening and not Tuesday.
The member countries also decided to postpone the debates on Taiwan's participation as an observer, requested by the United States and fifteen other countries. After enjoying observer status, the island was excluded from WHO in 2016 under Chinese pressure, the Taiwanese president refusing to recognize the principle of the unity of the island and mainland China within from the same country.
- Praise from the WHO and its boss -
The postponement of the debates was accepted Monday without opposition from the United States but soon after, the American diplomat Mike Pompeo condemned in a press release the "exclusion" of Taiwan, and denounced the "lack of independence" of the WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, accused of "choosing not to invite Taiwan under pressure from the People's Republic of China".
Addressing the WHO meeting, his US Secretary of State for Health, Alex Azar, assured that the "failure" of the UN agency in the face of the Covid-19 pandemic has cost "many lives ", calling for a" much more transparent "WHO that" is more accountable ".
In a diametrically opposite speech, the vast majority of senior dignitaries who spoke on the occasion of this virtual diplomatic marathon sang the praises of the WHO and its boss, while recognizing the need to strengthen this specialized agency of United Nations.
While WHO "depends on 80% of voluntary contributions" from countries, "is it decent to demand so much from it and to pay in such an arbitrary manner," notably launched Swiss President Simonetta Sommaruga.
Opening the discussions, UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres for his part criticized the countries that have "ignored the recommendations of WHO", saying that the world today is paying "high prices" for divergent strategies.
Calling for a "huge multilateral effort" in the face of this "tragedy", he said he hoped "that the search for a vaccine could be the starting point".
As in echo, Chinese President Xi Jinping has assured that a possible Chinese vaccine will become a "global public good", promising that his country would also devote two billion dollars over two years to the global fight against Covid-19.
In a video message, French President Emmanuel Macron also said that if a vaccine is discovered, it "will be a global public good, to which everyone should be able to have access".
- European resolution -
Despite strong American criticism of the WHO and China, the countries hope to adopt in the next few hours a resolution brought by the European Union which demands "universal, rapid and equitable access to all products ( ...) necessary for the response to the pandemic ", and underlines the role of" large-scale vaccination against Covid-19, as a global public good ".
The text also calls for launching "as soon as possible (...) an evaluation process" to examine the international health response and the measures taken by WHO in response to the pandemic.
He also calls on WHO to "collaborate closely with the World Organization for Animal Health, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations and countries (...) with a view to identifying the zoonotic source of the virus and to determine by which route it was introduced into the human population, (...) in particular by means of scientific missions and missions of collaboration in the field ".
If the resolution is adopted, "it will be an important result because the WHO will be the first world forum to find itself unanimously on a text," said a European diplomatic source.
"No subject was avoided" in the resolution, like "continue to reform the WHO and in particular its capacities which have proved insufficient to prevent a crisis of this magnitude," assured this European source to AFP.
LTedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus already reaffirmed Monday that the WHO had sounded the alarm "quickly" and "often", and that he would launch an "independent" investigation into the response to the pandemic of the UN agency and of its member states "as soon as possible at the appropriate time".
© 2020 AFP