Sydney - Australian Prime Minister Scott
Morrison has sought support for an international investigation
into the coronavirus pandemic in phone calls with US President
Donald Trump and the German and French leaders, the government
said on Wednesday.
Australia's push for an independent review of the origins
and spread of the pandemic, including the response of the World
Health Organization (WHO), has drawn sharp criticism from China,
which has accused Australian lawmakers of taking instructions
from the United States.
The new coronavirus, believed to have emerged in a market
in the central Chinese city of Wuhan, was first reported by
China to the WHO on December 31.
WHO informed member states of the outbreak on January 5 and
warned publicly a week later that there was "limited"
human-to-human transmission. WHO officials arrived in Wuhan on
January 20, after the virus had spread to three other countries. It
went on to declare a global emergency on January 30.
The virus has since infected some 2.3 million people
globally and killed nearly 160 000, according to Reuters
calculations.
Morrison said on Twitter on Wednesday he had "a very
constructive discussion" with Trump on the two nation's
responses to Covid-19 and the need to get economies up and
running.
%%%twitter https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@realDonaldTrump. We had a very constructive discussion on our health responses to #COVID19 and the need to get our market-led and business centres economies up and running again.
— Scott Morrison (@ScottMorrisonMP)
"We also talked about the WHO & working together to improve
the transparency & effectiveness of the international responses
to pandemics," he tweeted.
The White House has been fiercely critical of China and the
WHO, and has withdrawn US funding from the UN agency.
Morrison also spoke to German Chancellor Angela Merkel and
French President Emmanuel Macron by phone about the role of the
WHO, his office said.
%%%twitter https://twitter.com/EmmanuelMacron?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@EmmanuelMacron. We talked about the @WHO and the need for greater international cooperation in response to pandemics, including a vaccine, and as we recover from this global crisis.
— Scott Morrison (@ScottMorrisonMP)
WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus has
repeatedly said that the UN agency will evaluate its handling
of the pandemic after it ends and draw the appropriate lessons,
as it does after all emergencies.
"WHO wants this more than any organisation because we want
to learn from our mistakes, from our strengths and move forward.
But for now the focus should be on fighting this virus,” Tedros
told a briefing earlier this month.
In Berlin, the government confirmed that Merkel had spoken
with Morrison on Tuesday. Last Friday, her spokesman said: "The
coronavirus appeared first in China. China has suffered a lot
from the virus and did a lot to fight against spreading.”
Australia is examining whether the WHO should be given
powers, similar to international weapons inspectors, to enter a
country to investigate an outbreak without having to wait for
consent, a government source told Reuters.
Senior Australian lawmakers have also questioned Beijing's
transparency over the pandemic.
China's embassy in Canberra said in a statement late on
Tuesday that Australian lawmakers were acting as the mouthpiece
of Trump and "certain Australian politicians are keen to parrot
what those Americans have asserted and simply follow them in
staging political attacks on China".
But Foreign Affairs Minister Marise Payne has instead cast
Australia as taking the lead in establishing an investigation
because it was “a liberal democracy with a proved history of
shaping constructive global co-operation".
No country "need feel singled out", she wrote in the
Australian newspaper.
Richard McGregor, senior fellow with foreign policy think
tank The Lowy Institute, said the vitriolic reaction from
Chinese diplomats towards Australia, even as France and Germany
also called for more transparency from Beijing, showed “how bad
bilateral relations are".
Morrison had been restrained in his comments about China,
McGregor said, "but that doesn't seem to have won him any
brownie points in Beijing, which now has a settled view of
Australia as a U.S. lackey".
Ties between Australia and China have soured in recent
years, with Canberra the first government to exclude telecoms
equipment maker Huawei Technologies from its 5G
network.
Still, China is Australia's largest trading partner, buying
more than one-third of the country’s total exports, particularly
iron ore and coal.
Treasurer Josh Frydenberg said on Wednesday that Australia
maintains “a good relationship at the commercial level with
China” and local jobs relied on this.
Australia has recorded just over 6,600 cases of the virus
nationally, with four new cases on Wednesday. Infection rates
have slowed from 25% in mid-March to less than 1% a day.
Lawmakers plan to ease some curbs, with Australia's iconic
Bondi Beach to partially reopen next week.