MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Trump accuses China of unleashing Covid-19; Xi poses as global leader of multilateralism

“We must hold accountable the nation which unleashed this plague onto the world, China,” Trump said in remarks taped on Monday

U.S. President Donald Trump told the United Nations General Assembly on Tuesday that China must be held accountable for having “unleashed” COVID-19 on the world, prompting Beijing to accuse him of “lies” and abusing the U.N. platform to provoke confrontation.

China’s President Xi Jinping struck a conciliatory tone in his pre-recorded virtual address to the General Assembly, calling for enhanced cooperation over the pandemic and stressing that China had no intention of fighting “either a Cold War or a hot war with any country.”

But China’s U.N. ambassador Zhang Jun rejected Trump’s accusations against China as “baseless” and said “lies repeated a thousand times are still lies.”

Trump and Xi, leaders of the world’s two largest economies, laid out competing visions at a time when relations have plunged to their worst level in decades, with coronavirus tensions aggravating trade and technology disputes.

Trump, facing a November re-election battle with the United States dealing with the world’s highest official number of deaths and infections from the coronavirus, focused his speech on attacking China.

He accused Beijing of allowing people to leave China in the early stages of the outbreak to infect the world while shutting down domestic travel.

“We must hold accountable the nation which unleashed this plague onto the world, China,” he said in remarks taped on Monday and delivered remotely to the General Assembly due to the pandemic.

“The Chinese government, and the World Health Organization – which is virtually controlled by China – falsely declared that there was no evidence of human-to-human transmission,” he said.

“Later, they falsely said people without symptoms would not spread the disease ... The United Nations must hold China accountable for their actions.”

The president promised to distribute a vaccine and said: “We will defeat the virus, and we will end the pandemic.”

Xi’s address contained what appeared to be an implicit rebuke to Trump, calling for a global response to the coronavirus and a leading role for the WHO, which the U.S. president has announced plans to leave.

“We should enhance solidarity and get through this together,” he said.

“We should follow the guidance of science, give full play to the leading role of the World Health Organization and launch a joint international response ... Any attempt of politicizing the issue, or stigmatization, must be rejected.”

Russian President Vladimir Putin told the General Assembly the WHO should be strengthened to coordinate the global response to the pandemic and proposed a high-level conference on vaccine cooperation.

China has portrayed itself as the chief cheerleader for multilateralism at a time when Trump’s disregard for international cooperation has led him to quit global deals on climate and Iran, as well as the U.N. Human Rights Council and the WHO.

Xi took an apparent swipe at Trump’s “America First” policy in a statement on Monday to a meeting celebrating the U.N.’s 75th anniversary.

“No country has the right to dominate global affairs, control the destiny of others, or keep advantages in development all to itself. Even less should one be allowed to do whatever it likes and be the hegemonic, bully or boss of the world. Unilateralism is a dead end,” he said.

In his U.N. address, French President Emmanuel Macron called for an international mission under U.N. auspices to visit China’s Xinjiang region to look into concerns about alleged abuses of Muslims there.

China’s envoy Zhang Jun issued a statement in response to Trump’s remarks, accusing the United States of “abusing the platform of the United Nations to provoke confrontation and create division.”

In his speech, Xi announced plans to boost China’s Paris climate accord target and called for a green revolution, just minutes after Trump blasted China for “rampant pollution.”