China Remains Biggest Foreign Policy Challenge: US Secretary, Blinken

WITH US agencies probing the Covid-19 Virus as directed by POTUS  Joe Biden,  Secretary of State Antony Blinken has gone on record saying PRC is the only country to seriously challenge the stable and open international systems. Blinken made the remark in a speech on US  Foreign Policy at the Department of State on Wednesday. Referring to China’s actions, Blinken called for allies and partners to exert their combined weight and stand for their values when Human Rights in Xinjiang or democracy in Hong Kong is trampled upon by China with impunity. Meanwhile, India and several other nations have appreciated  The White House decision to investigate the Covid-19 origin irking China and WHO. Facing worldwide criticism for more in-depth investigation of the Covid-19 pandemic origins, the multinational World Health Organization said on Friday that it was still awaiting expert guidance.US President Joe Biden has ordered the US intelligence community to investigate whether the Covid-19 virus first emerged in China from an animal source or from a laboratory accident. WHO says it was still waiting for recommendations from a team of its technical experts on how to move forward.  “The technical team will prepare a proposal for the next studies that will need to be carried out and will present that to the director-general,” spokeswoman Fadela Chaib told media persons. The WHO finally managed to send a team of independent, international experts to Wuhan in January, more than a year after Covid-19 first surfaced there in late 2019, to help probe the pandemic origins, News 18 reported. But in their long-delayed report published in late March, the international team and their Chinese counterparts drew no firm conclusions, instead of ranking a number of hypotheses according to how likely they believe they were. The report said the virus jumping from bats to humans via an intermediate animal was the most probable scenario, while a theory involving the virus leaking from a laboratory was “extremely unlikely” as NEWS 18 says.  But the investigation and report have faced criticism for lacking transparency and access, and for not evaluating the lab-leak theory more deeply — a mere 440 words of the report were dedicated to discussing and dismissing it. Edited by PKC