Moscow, Mar 23: US President Donald Trump says he is “upset” with his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping because Beijing could have given Washington an earlier warning about the coronavirus.
Asked about the last time the two leaders spoke, Trump told reporters at the White House on Sunday “I have spoken to President Xi about this,” declining to give the exact date.
“I am a little upset with China, I’ll be honest with you. Because as much as I like President Xi and as much as I respect the country ? they should have told us about this,” Trump said, adding that the United States had offered China help in terms of sending specialists, but China “didn’t really respond.”
Trump said on Wednesday that China could have given the United States notice of the novel coronavirus outbreak much earlier, but that he did not think China had inflicted the disease on Americans.
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang said on Friday that US officials continued trying to denigrate China and associate COVID-19 with Beijing, and China was therefore calling on Washington to stop shifting responsibility for wasting time it had to prepare for the pandemic on others. (AGENCIES)
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