China ‘risks international isolation’ over investigation into coronavirus origin: Biden aide
- US national security adviser Jake Sullivan said the US will ‘get to the bottom of how this virus came into the world and who has accountability for that’
- China has rejected the theory that the virus originated in a lab in Wuhan, the Chinese city where the first cases were reported
China will risk international isolation if it fails to allow a “real” investigation on its territory into the origins of the virus that caused the Covid-19 pandemic, US national security adviser Jake Sullivan said on Sunday.
The goal is to present China with “a stark choice: Either they will allow, in a responsible way, investigators in to do the real work of figuring out where this came from, or they will face isolation in the international community,” Sullivan said in an interview on Fox News Sunday.
The US will continue pressing in cooperation with its allies and partners “until we get to the bottom of how this virus came into the world and who has accountability for that.”
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China has rejected the theory that the virus originated in a lab in Wuhan, the Chinese city where the first cases were reported.
The World Health Organization investigation, which previously sent a mission to China to report on the virus origins, is expected to lead a second investigation separately from the US intelligence effort.
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“We are not at this point going to issue threats or ultimatums,” Sullivan said on CNN’s State of the Union programme. If China does not live up to its obligations, “we will have to consider our responses at that point and we will do so in concert with allies and partners,” he said.
“We’re not going to simply accept China saying no,” Sullivan said.
