Beijing said on Wednesday that the FBI was undermining its credibility after comments by its director saying that a laboratory accident in the Chinese city of Wuhan is “very likely” at the origin of the covid-19 pandemic. Christopher Wray’s remarks to Fox News on Tuesday came two days after a similar position was put forward by a US department.
The FBI “brings this theory out of a laboratory leak, which can in no way discredit China, but only further undermines its own credibility,” Mao Ning, a spokesman for the Chinese Foreign Ministry, reacted. “Given the lies, deceptions and countless misdeeds committed by the US intelligence services, their conclusions have absolutely no credibility,” he stressed during a regular press conference.
The FBI points to the behavior of the Chinese authorities
Christopher Wray’s comments followed a similar announcement from the US Department of Energy. New intelligence elements have tilted the ministry’s analysis on the side of the leak hypothesis, according to anonymous sources cited by the Wall Street JournalHE New York Times and CNN. The newspapers insist, however, that this new analysis is published “with a low level of confidence” by the ministry, which oversees biology laboratories. The US intelligence world is now even more divided, with some believing that Covid arose through natural transmission.
In the interview, Christopher Wray also accused China of trying to block the US-led investigation into the causes of the pandemic that broke out in early 2020, killing nearly 7 million people and disrupting the world for months.
“The Chinese government (…) has done everything possible to try to frustrate and confuse the work that we are doing, the work that our US government and our close foreign partners are doing,” he said. “And that’s unfortunate for everyone.”
China urges WHO to review case of US laboratories
Beijing vigorously disputes these claims. During Wednesday’s press conference, spokesman Mao Ning reiterated the idea that the World Health Organization (WHO) should also investigate US laboratories, particularly the one at Fort Detrick, at the center of the US investigation against bioterrorism. .
“The United States must respect science and facts, immediately cooperate with the WHO, invite international experts to conduct investigations into the origin of the virus, and share the results of the investigations with the international community,” he said. For the scientific community, it is crucial to determine the origin of the Covid-19 pandemic, in order to better prevent and combat a next epidemic wave.
Source: BFM TV
