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The
U.S. embassy, which issued a health alert on Wednesday to
Americans living in China, said it could not link the case to
health problems suffered by U.S. government staff in Cuba dating
back to late 2016.
Foreign Ministry spokesman Lu Kang said China has always
safeguarded the security of foreign organizations and personnel
of foreign countries, including the United States, according to
the Vienna convention.
"China has already conducted an earnest investigation and we
have also given initial feedback to the U.S. side," Lu told a
daily news briefing in Beijing.
"Currently, we have not found any reasons or clues leading to
the situation described by the United States," he said.
In Washington on Wednesday, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo
said the United States was concerned about the "serious medical
incident" and raised it with China's visiting State Councillor
Wang Yi.
The unnamed U.S. citizen assigned to the consulate in the
southern city of Guangzhou had reported various "physical
symptoms" dating from late 2017 to April this year, the U.S.
embassy in Beijing said in an email.
The worker was sent to the United States for further evaluation.
"The clinical findings of this evaluation matched mild traumatic
brain injury (MTBI)," the embassy said.
The State Department will send a medical team to Guangzhou early
next week to conduct baseline medical evaluations of all
consulate employees who request it, State Department spokeswoman
Heather Nauert said.
China's nationalistic state-run Global Times tabloid said in a
commentary late on Wednesday that it was "very inappropriate"
that the United States issued a public health alert despite only
having a "vague understanding" of the situation.
It said it was "inconceivable" that China would carry out
targeted attacks on the health of foreign diplomats.
"We firmly believe that there is not much possibility of any
'background' to the American consulate official's 'brain
injury'," it said.
The U.S. government in October expelled 15 Cuban diplomats from
the United States for what it said was Cuba's failure to protect
staff at the U.S. embassy in Havana from mysterious health
incidents at one point thought to possibly have been acoustic
"attacks".
Staff there reported symptoms including hearing loss, dizziness,
fatigue and cognitive issues, though Cuban officials dismissed
the idea of acoustic strikes as "science fiction" and accused
Washington of slander.
The cause of those incidents remains unresolved.
The Canadian government in April said it would remove families
of diplomats posted to Cuba after Canadian personnel there in
2017 also reported similar health symptoms.
(Reporting by Michael Martina; Writing by Ben Blanchard; Editing
by Clarence Fernandez and Darren Schuettler)
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