The virus has killed more than 255,000 people worldwide, including
more than 70,000 in the United States, the worst-affected country,
since it was first identified in the central Chinese city of Wuhan
in December.
Pompeo accused China of withholding virus samples he said were
needed for global vaccine research, and he demanded transparency.
Most experts believe COVID-19 originated in a market selling
wildlife and jumped from animals to people, but Pompeo and U.S.
President Donald Trump have said there is evidence it came from a
laboratory, without elaborating.
Pompeo also accused the WHO of being too slow to respond to the
disease and said it "needs to still demand that there be an
investigation" in China.
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying, addressing
reporters in Beijing on Thursday, said China supported WHO efforts
to investigate the origin of the pandemic.
"We are always open to cooperate with the WHO on matters, including
on the question of origin," she said. But she repeated a timeline of
signals from France, Sweden and the United States itself that the
virus may not have emerged in China.
"While scientists have not come to a conclusion, why is Secretary
Pompeo drawing the hasty conclusion that the virus came from a Wuhan
lab? Where is his proof? Show us the proof. If he cannot show any
evidence, then he may still be in the process of making up this
evidence."
The WHO has urged countries to investigate any early suspicious
cases and called earlier comments about a possible laboratory source
by Pompeo "speculative".
Hua said Pompeo had contradicted himself in interviews about the
virus. "The reason why he contradicts himself is because he is
always making up a lie to cover up another lie. This is an open
secret."
'WORSE THAN PEARL HARBOR'
At a White House event on Wednesday, Trump, who is seeking
re-election in November, called the virus the worst "attack" the
United States had ever experienced, and blamed China for not
stopping it.
"This is worse than Pearl Harbor. This is worse than the World Trade
Center," Trump said. "And it should have never happened. It could
have been stopped at the source. It could have been stopped in
China. It should have been stopped right at the source, and it
wasn't."
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He has accused the WHO of being "China-centric" and acting too
slowly to fight the disease, and threatened to withdraw funds, while
many scientists have said now is the time to increase funding and
global cooperation to find a vaccine.
Japan attacked Pearl Harbor in Hawaii in 1941 and al Qaeda militants
flew hijacked airliners into the World Trade Center in New York on
Sept. 11, 2001.
Hua said the only enemy was the virus.
"Because that is the common enemy of all of humanity... Faced with
this mankind battle against the virus, China should be (a) U.S.
comrade in arms, not enemy."
She also said that Chinese local governments and companies had donated 9.6
million masks, 500,000 test kits, 305,000 pairs of gloves and 133,500 pairs of
goggles to 55 cities in 30 U.S. states as of Tuesday.
Anthony Fauci, director of the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious
Diseases and a member of Trump's Coronavirus Task Force, said in an interview
published on Monday the best evidence showed the virus was not made in a lab,
but appeared to have "evolved in nature and then jumped species".
The European Union ambassador to China said on Thursday it was "regrettable"
that part of an opinion piece about the pandemic co-authored by 27 European
ambassadors and published in the official China Daily had been removed before
publication.
A comparison between the original op-ed uploaded onto the EU embassy website and
the one published on Tuesday by the China Daily showed that in a sentence
beginning, "But the outbreak of the coronavirus", the words that followed - "in
China, and its subsequent spread to the rest of the world over the past three
months" - had been removed.
(Reporting by Yew Lun Tian; writing by Nick Macfie; editing by Mark Heinrich)
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