MOSCOW, April 9. /TASS/. The United States’ warning it may suspend membership dues to the budget of the World Health Organization may be just the beginning, while the main thrust of the US political and economic attack following the coronavirus pandemic will be against China, the chairman of the Federation Council’s International Affairs Committee, Konstantin Kosachev, said on Thursday.
"I suspect that it is just the beginning. The World Health Organization may be an interim target. The United States is getting ready for a political and economic attack on China following the coronavirus pandemic from different angles, and it will take place in any weather," Kosachev said on Facebook.
He stressed that the US policy towards self-isolation had been obvious long before the coronavirus pandemic. "And, of course, the situation inside the United States and election year realities have overlapped. Trump needs a scapegoat, an external agent that would be easy to blame for the United States’ current problems. He picked an influential international organization for this role," Kosachev stated.
The US logic, he remarked, is easy to recognize — it sees no reason for funding organizations that do not work for the United States. Kosachev recalled that at a certain point US President Donald Trump criticized a number of UN member countries for voting the wrong way at the UN General Assembly session and warned to curtail economic aid.
"UNESCO is not funded. Just recently the US leader cracked down on the international criminal court in the Hague for daring to criticize the US operation in Afghanistan. Now the WHO is in the line of fire. Obviously, Washington sees its membership dues to international organizations not as action taken for the sake of common interests, but as payment for some services. If a certain organization does not take a pro-US stance, it makes no sense paying," Kosachev noted.
Earlier, Trump said that Washington was considering the possibility of suspending its membership dues to the WHO budget. He argued that every step the WHO had taken to fight the coronavirus was wrong. Also, he described the organization as "China-centric."