In a report summary, U.S. officials say the country’s intelligence community has failed to resolve the debate within the Biden administration over whether a Chinese laboratory incident was the source of Covid-19. It says Beijing needs to provide more details.
The report, issued by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence in response to President Joe Biden’s request, said a satisfying answer to the question of how a virus started remained out of reach.
The disagreement among organizations within the U.S. intelligence community about the origins of the novel coronavirus will not be welcomed by the White House.
The assessment by U.S. spy agencies delivered didn’t find a definitive conclusion on whether the coronavirus jumped to humans naturally, or via a lab leak.
According to the summary, American spy agencies think “natural exposure to an animal infected with it or a close progenitor virus”. Other groups were not able to come to a firm opinion saying more information from China is needed.
The new assessment, which was ordered by Biden 90 days ago, highlights the difficultly facing the U.S. President’s administration in politicizing the issue against America’s economic rival and superpower China.
Beijing has ridiculed the theory that Covid-19 escaped from a lab in Wuhan and has suggested Covid-19 may have slipped out of a lab in Fort Detrick, Maryland, in 2019.
Nevertheless, in the report summary, U.S. officials said only more information from China can help solve questions about the true origins of the virus. Beijing has rejected this, saying it has shown transparency with the World Health Organization.
China's embassy in Washington says "the report by the U.S. intelligence community shows that the U.S. is bent on going down the wrong path of political manipulation… the report by the intelligence community is based on the presumption of guilt on the part of China, and it is only for scapegoating China."
No comments:
Post a Comment