05/03/2020 - 12:03
- Clarín.com
- World
US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said Sunday that there is a "tremendous" amount of evidence that the new coronavirus pandemic originated in a laboratory in Wuhan , where the outbreak in China began. In this way, he insisted on the theory that Donald Trump had put on the scene in recent days.
"I can say that there is a significant amount of evidence that this virus came from a laboratory in Wuhan," he told ABC, although he declined to say whether he believed the virus had been intentionally released . He added: "We have said from the beginning that the virus started there and they criticized us for it, but I think the world has just realized it now."
Trump said Thursday that he was considering implementing punitive tariffs against China after accessing evidence connecting the new coronavirus to a Chinese laboratory. The president answered "yes" to a journalist's question about whether he has seen evidence that would allow him to point to the Wuhan Institute of Virology as the source of the pandemic.
The words of the President and his Secretary of State contrast with the official voice of the World Health Organization, which in recent days stated that the evidence available so far, "suggests that the new coronavirus has a natural animal origin and is not a manipulated or constructed virus . "
"Many researchers have been able to look at the genomic characteristics of SARS-CoV-2 and have found that the evidence does not support the theory that SARS-CoV-2 is a laboratory construction," said the world health body.
But Trump and Pompeo also go against US Intelligence itself, which rejected that the virus is an artificial creation, amid leaks to the press that Trump administration officials have pressured the spy services to They are looking for evidence that it originated in a laboratory in Wuhan.
"The entire Intelligence community has consistently been providing crucial support to US politicians and those responding to the Covid-19 virus, which originated in China. The Intelligence community also agrees with the broad Scientific consensus that the virus is neither artificial nor genetically modified, "says the note sent by the office of the director of the American National Intelligence, Richard Grenell.
Despite everything, Pompeo referred this Sunday to that vision that came out from the United States Government itself: "I have seen what the intelligence community has concluded and I have no reason to believe that they were wrong." But he redoubled his accusations against the Chinese government, which has behaved like "all authoritarian regimes, trying to hide, hide, and confuse" the nature and spread of the virus.
Furthermore, the secretary of state regretted that China has used WHO as a tool to spread this kind of false information. "We are facing an ongoing threat, a pandemic that still continues. The Chinese Communist Party continues to deny the West access to the best scientists in the West to find out what has happened," he concluded.
Pompeo believes that the North Korean shooting in the South was "by accident."
US Secretary Mike Pompeo said Sunday that he believes the multiple shots fired by North Korea at a southern border guard post located in the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) occurred "by accident . "
"From our internal information, we can confirm that ... a few shots were fired from the North. We believe it was by accident," Pompeo said in an interview with ABC News television. Pompeo recalled that the South Koreans "returned fire" and that "there was no loss of life on either side . "
The incident took place when a southern border guard post located in the demilitarized zone (DMZ) received multiple bullet wounds from the North, to which it responded by firing two rounds of warning and with a public address message, the Joint Chiefs of Staff reported. South Korean (JCS) in a statement.
A South Korean Army official told local agency Yonhap that the incident does not appear to be a deliberate provocation from the North, although he added that it does violate bilateral military agreements signed in 2018 to end hostilities on the peninsula in the context of the detente process. inter-korean.
The event also occurred hours after North Korean leader Kim Jong-un reappeared in state propaganda media after a 21-day public absence, during which there was speculation about the alleged severity of his health condition and even with his death.
US President Donald Trump said Saturday that he was "happy" to see that Kim "is fine," and Pompeo said Washington does not know the reasons for his prolonged absence.
Asked if he could rule out that Kim had had the COVID-19 or cardiovascular problems, as rumored, the secretary of state declined to offer further details, saying only that such a long absence from the North Korean leader "is not unprecedented."
The head of US diplomacy stressed that his government remains focused on "convincing the North Koreans to abandon their nuclear weapons, verify that and then create a better future for the North Korean people."
However, the process of dialogue between the United States and North Korea has been stalled since the failure of the second summit between Trump and Kim in February 2019 in Vietnam, and differences around the denuclearization process prompted Pyongyang to announce late last year that it was suspending dialogue with Washington.
With information from AFP, DPA and EFE.
