US, China, Russia trade jibes over Covid response

The United States, China and Russia butted heads at the United Nations on Thursday over responsibility for the pandemic that has interrupted the world, trading allegations about who mishandled and politicized the virus in one of the few real-time exchanges among top officials at this year's COVID-distanced U.N. General Assembly meeting.

The remarks at the U.N. Security Council came two days after U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres decried the lack of international cooperation in tackling the still out-of-control coronavirus.

The sharp exchanges, at the end of a virtual meeting on “Post COVID-19 Global Governance,” reflected the deep divisions among the three veto-wielding council members that have escalated since the virus first emerged in the Chinese city of Wuhan.

Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi, speaking first, stressed the importance of U.N.-centered multilateralism and alluded to countries - including the U.S. - opting out of making a COVID-19 vaccine a global public good available to people everywhere.

And in a jab at U.S. and European Union sanctions including on Russia, Syria and others, he said: "Unilateral sanctions and long-arm jurisdiction needs to be opposed in order to safeguard the authority and sanctity of international law.”

Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said the pandemic and its "common misfortune did not iron out interstate differences, but to the contrary deepened them.”

“And we see attempts on the part of individual countries to use the current situation in order to move forward their narrow interests of the moment in order to settle the score with the undesirable governments or geopolitical competitors.”

That was too much for the United States' U.N. ambassador, Kelly Craft, who opened her remarks late in the meeting with a blunt rejoinder.

“Shame on each of you. I am astonished and disgusted by the content of today’s discussion," Craft said.

She said other representatives were “squandering this opportunity for political purposes."

“President Trump has made it very clear: We will do whatever is right, even if it’s unpopular, because, let me tell you what, this is not a popularity contest,” Craft said.

She quoted Trump’s speech Tuesday to the virtual opening of the General Assembly's leaders meeting in which he said that to chart a better future, “we must hold accountable the nation which unleashed this plague onto the world: China.”