{"id":26342,"date":"2020-05-30T15:08:18","date_gmt":"2020-05-30T09:38:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/kashmir.today\/coronavirus-trump-terminates-us-relationship-with-who\/"},"modified":"2020-05-30T15:08:18","modified_gmt":"2020-05-30T09:38:18","slug":"coronavirus-trump-terminates-us-relationship-with-who","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kashmir.watch\/?p=26342","title":{"rendered":"Coronavirus: Trump terminates US relationship with WHO"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"story-body__introduction wp-block-paragraph\">US President Donald Trump has announced that he is terminating the country&#8217;s relationship with the World Health Organization (WHO).<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The president has accused the WHO of failing to hold Beijing to account over the coronavirus pandemic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">&#8220;China has total control over the World Health Organization,&#8221; the president said while announcing measures aimed at punishing Beijing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Washington will redirect funds to other bodies, he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Watch Video:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-text-align-center wp-block-paragraph\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Trump: &#039;We are terminating relationship with WHO&#039; - BBC News\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/lGgMBHJq8VM?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The US is the global health agency&#8217;s largest single contributor, providing more than $400m (\u00a3324m; \u20ac360m) in 2019.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Mr Trump, who is campaigning for re-election this year and has been criticised for his own handling of the pandemic, has blamed China for trying to cover up the coronavirus outbreak.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">More than 102,000 people in the US have lost their lives to Covid-19 &#8211; by far the biggest death toll in the world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"story-body__crosshead wp-block-heading\">What did Trump say?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">&#8220;We will be today terminating our relationship with the World Health Organization and directing those funds&#8221; to other global public health charities, Mr Trump said in the White House Rose Garden.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">&#8220;The world is now suffering as a result of the malfeasance of the Chinese government,&#8221; he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">He added that China had &#8220;instigated a global pandemic that has cost over 100,000 American lives&#8221;.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The president accused China of pressurising the WHO to &#8220;mislead the world&#8221; about the virus.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"story-body__crosshead wp-block-heading\">What&#8217;s the background to this?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Mr Trump&#8217;s criticism of the WHO&#8217;s handling of the pandemic began last month when he threatened to permanently withdraw US funding, suggesting the UN health agency had&nbsp;<strong>&#8220;failed in its basic duty&#8221;<\/strong>&nbsp;in its response.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">&#8220;It is clear the repeated missteps by you and your organisation in responding to the pandemic have been extremely costly for the world,&#8221; he wrote in a letter to WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus on 18 May.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">He later labelled the WHO a &#8220;puppet of China&#8221;.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-text-align-center wp-block-paragraph\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Donald Trump says US conducting &#039;serious&#039; investigations into China&#039;s response to Covid-19 outbreak\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/SZe3S91vNXc?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-text-align-center wp-block-paragraph\">Mr Trump has repeatedly criticised China&#8217;s early handling of the outbreak<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">China has accused the US of being responsible for the spread of the virus on its own soil, attributing the outbreak to American &#8220;politicians who lie&#8221;.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Earlier this month, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian said Mr Trump was trying to mislead the public, smear China and &#8220;shift the blame for [the US&#8217;s] own incompetent response&#8221;.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">WHO member states have since agreed to set up an independent inquiry into the global response to the pandemic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>With inputs from <\/em><em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/news\/world-us-canada-52857413?at_custom4=5CADF9EA-A24B-11EA-B1C6-8FA696E8478F&#038;at_campaign=64&#038;at_custom1=%5Bpost+type%5D&#038;at_medium=custom7&#038;at_custom2=facebook_page&#038;at_custom3=BBC+News&#038;fbclid=IwAR3orAvUOK8dnO0hKagK3ec5X6rTWhJozujqYZ2tjCcDqYvCvwRWP6p1Aus\">BBC World News<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>US President Donald Trump has announced that he is terminating the country&#8217;s relationship with the World Health Organization (WHO). The president has accused the WHO of failing to hold Beijing to account over the coronavirus pandemic. &#8220;China has total control over the World Health Organization,&#8221; the president said while announcing measures aimed at punishing Beijing. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":23364,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-26342","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kashmir.watch\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26342","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kashmir.watch\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kashmir.watch\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kashmir.watch\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kashmir.watch\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=26342"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/kashmir.watch\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26342\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kashmir.watch\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=26342"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kashmir.watch\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=26342"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kashmir.watch\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=26342"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}