M16 Chief states :Originally Posted by Wales-Bales
Too late, Bob's just gone all in and he's joined lardy & cyril alternative facts club. I tried to save him, but it is with great sadness that I have to announce that I failed
Sir John Sawers said that there were flaws in the WHO’s passive response
TOBY MELVILLE/GETTY IMAGES
Lucy Fisher, Defence Editor
Wednesday April 15 2020, 12.00pm, The Times
The World Health Organisation’s shortcomings should be looked at but China was not taking responsibility for its failures on coronavirus, a former MI6 chief has said.
Sir John Sawers, 64, spoke out after President Trump last night halted American funding for the WHO and accused it of “severely mismanaging and covering up” the initial outbreak of Covid-19 in Hubei province, China.
Mr Trump said that the United Nations agency “willingly took China’s assurances at face value” about the transmission of the virus and “pushed China’s misinformation”.
Sir John, who was Britain’s permanent representative at the UN before he led MI6 between 2009 and 2014, acknowledged flaws in the WHO’s passive response to China’s disinformation campaign. He said, though, that criticism should be focused on Xi*Jinping’s administration.
“There’s deep anger in America over what they see as having been inflicted on us all by China, and China is evading a good deal of responsibility for the origin of the virus, for failing to deal with it initially,” he told BBC Radio 4’s*Today*programme.
“It would be better to hold China responsible for those issues rather than the World Health Organisation. The WHO is only as good as its member states, like all UN agencies.”
He added: “China’s role in the United Nations has steadily grown as China’s power has grown. Heads of UN agencies are wary of offending one of the major powers, but that does not excuse the head of the WHO for failing to stand up for the facts and the data and making the right demands of the Chinese.
“I think the WHO has got serious questions to answer about its performance, but actually anger should be directed against China rather than against the UN agencies.”
Sir John emphasised that the West must co-operate with Beijing to curb the pandemic. “We can’t find a way out of this without working with China,” he said.
Tom Tugendhat, Conservative chairman of the Commons foreign affairs committee, expressed wariness over Mr Trump’s decision to pull funding from the WHO but acknowledged his frustrations.
“I’m concerned by this. This is of course an important time for the WHO to be doing its job,” he told Sky News this morning.
“I understand his concerns with the way that the WHO has failed to call out China or indeed recognise the success that has been going on in Taiwan among other places.”
Simon Coveney, Ireland’s foreign minister, took a more hardline approach against Mr Trump’s decision. “This is [an] indefensible decision, in midst of global pandemic,” he said on Twitter. “So many vulnerable populations rely on WHO — deliberately undermining funding & trust now is shocking. Now is a time for global leadership & unity to save lives, not division and blame!”.
Last year the United States provided more than a twelfth of the organisation’s $6 billion funding, making it the biggest contributor.
Senior scientists based in Britain warned that Mr Trump’s move was likely to have damaging consequences.
Michael Head, senior research fellow in global health at the University of Southampton, said his institution’s analysis showed that more than 75 per cent of global funding on coronavirus research had been contributed by American-based funders so far, highlighting the strong influence of the US on global health.
“The WHO role is more taking new knowledge from research and creating policy, guidance and surveillance,” he said. “But if the USA acts provocatively over global health and biosecurity, it will become a very big problem. The effects would be seen worldwide, but also rebounding back o nto the USA where high-threat pathogens would be more likely to occur in future.”
Tedros Ghebreyesus, the WHO’s director-general, had urged Mr Trump against politicising the pandemic and said that such a move risked “many more bodybags” when the US president hinted at halting funding earlier this month.
China claimed this week that it had secured a guarantee from Dominic Raab that the UK would not engage in “politicising” the outbreak.
The foreign secretary was also said to have “fully agreed” with Chinese foreign minister, Wang Yi, during a recent phone call that the source of the virus required “assessment”, according to a statement published by the Chinese Embassy in London.
Yesterday Lord Hague of Richmond, the former Conservative Party leader and foreign secretary, conceded that the West “don’t have that much of a stick” with which to punish China for its behaviour.
“Can any of us see China agreeing to and permitting an international investigation into what’s happened here? I think that’s very unlikely and there have been coordinated attempts by China, on social media, to spread ideas that it was somebody else’s fault, including the fault of the United States,” he said.
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