President Joe Biden attends the media on August 25 at the White House Stefani Reynolds / POOL / EFE
US espionage has not been able to confirm that covid-19 has been developed as a biological weapon by the Chinese government. That is one of the main conclusions of a report that four intelligence agencies delivered to President Joe Biden on Tuesday after he had given them 90 days to investigate the origin of the disease. The president, through a statement issued on Friday, accused Beijing of obstructing the investigations. "There is crucial information about the origins of this pandemic in the People's Republic of China, but from the beginning, Chinese government officials have worked to prevent international researchers and members of the global public health community from accessing it," he said in the text.
Biden says that Beijing "continues to reject calls for transparency and withholding information" as the number of victims of the pandemic continues to grow.
The conclusions of the classified document lean, with a "low degree of confidence" however, towards the origin of the disease was caused by natural exposure "on a small scale" to an infected animal no later than November 2019. " We consider that the virus was not developed as a biological weapon, ”the text states, which also states that Chinese government officials did not learn of its existence until after the Wuhan outbreak.
The assessment is based on the existing “many animal exposure vectors”.
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One of the four intelligence agencies argues with "a moderate level of confidence" that it supports the thesis of a laboratory leak through "experiments, the handling of animals or samples from the Wuhan Institute of Virology."
Before the outbreak of the pandemic, there were two laboratories working with samples of the disease in the Chinese city, but the efforts of US spies have focused on investigating the institute.
Three other agencies do not comment on either of the two hypotheses mentioned.
The document does not clarify which of the 18 intelligence agencies serving Washington have been involved in drafting the document.
Some officials in the United States have received the report with disappointment, calling it inconclusive. Congressmen have asked Washington to insist on the investigation until they have more certainty. Other lawmakers have called for the creation of a special independent commission in Congress, like the one organized after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, to help unravel the mysteries that still surround the origin of the pandemic with the support of scientific experts. international
The response from the Chinese Embassy in Washington came late Friday. Beijing's diplomacy accused the US intelligence services of "manipulation" and of using the Asian government as "a scapegoat" on the basis of a "presumption of guilt". "The US intelligence report shows that the United States is determined to go down the wrong path of political manipulation," the statement added.
The Chinese response states that the US document has no "scientific basis or credibility."
"The United States is repeating its old tricks," says the statement in reference to its efforts to reduce credibility to the report made by the World Health Organization (WHO) in which China participated and to give "confidence" to the one prepared by its agencies .
The WHO report, however, also sparked a clash between Washington and Beijing.
China disagrees with accusations of opacity made by the Americans.
"Since the pandemic outbreak, China has always followed the principles of openness, transparency and accountability," says the statement, which argues that the report presented in March this year in conjunction with the WHO "adopted scientific methods and incorporated authority and scientificity. ”.
The new confrontation adds to the climate of tension between the United States and China. Joe Biden has set himself a policy that will reduce Xi Jinping's influence in the international community. The two powers continue their pulse in the commercial and technological fields, the arms race and the space race, in what some analysts have considered a new edition of the Cold War.