BEIJING: Delays to a long-planned mission by WHO experts to China to investigate the origins of the Covid-19 pandemic are “not just a visa issue,” Beijing said Wednesday.
A year after the outbreak started, international health experts were expected to arrive in China this week for a highly politicized visit to explore the beginnings of the virus, which first emerged late last year in the city of Wuhan.
The sensitive mission has been beset by delays and politics, with fears of a whitewash by Beijing.
Foreign ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying told reporters Wednesday that talks were continuing between the two sides over “the specific date and specific arrangement of the expert group’s visit.”
“The issue of origin-tracing is incredibly complicated. To ensure the work of the international expert team in China goes smoothly, we have to carry out necessary procedures and make relevant arrangements,” said Hua.
She said the country is “doing its best to create good conditions for the international expert group to come to China.”
On Tuesday the head of the World Health Organization told reporters Beijing had not yet finalized permission for the team’s arrival, saying he was “very disappointed with this news” — in a rare rebuke of Beijing from the UN body.
Earlier this week Chinese authorities refused to confirm the exact dates and details of the visit, a sign of the enduring sensitivity of the mission.
The WHO had previously said China has granted permission for a visit by a 10-person team.
Hua said China was “placing great importance and is actively communicating with the WHO.”
Impasse over WHO virus mission ‘not just a visa issue’: China
Impasse over WHO virus mission ‘not just a visa issue’: China
- International health experts were expected to arrive in China this week for a highly politicized visit to explore the beginnings of the virus
- The sensitive mission has been beset by delays and politics
NATO wants ‘automated’ defenses along borders with Russia: German general
- That zone would act as a defensive buffer before any enemy forces advanced into “a sort of hot zone,” said Lowin
- The AI-guided system would reinforce existing NATO weapons and deployed forces, the general said
FRANKFURT: NATO is moving to boost its defenses along European borders with Russia by creating an AI-assisted “automated zone” not reliant on human ground forces, a German general said in comments published Saturday.
That zone would act as a defensive buffer before any enemy forces advanced into “a sort of hot zone” where traditional combat could happen, said General Thomas Lowin, NATO’s deputy chief of staff for operations.
He was speaking to the German Sunday newspaper Welt am Sonntag.
The automated area would have sensors to detect enemy forces and activate defenses such as drones, semi-autonomous combat vehicles, land-based robots, as well as automatic air defenses and anti-missile systems, Lowin said.
He added, however, that any decision to use lethal weapons would “always be under human responsibility.”
The sensors — located “on the ground, in space, in cyberspace and in the air” — would cover an area of several thousand kilometers (miles) and detect enemy movements or deployment of weapons, and inform “all NATO countries in real time,” he said.
The AI-guided system would reinforce existing NATO weapons and deployed forces, the general said.
The German newspaper reported that there were test programs in Poland and Romania trying out the proposed capabilities, and all of NATO should be working to make the system operational by the end of 2027.
NATO’s European members are stepping up preparedness out of concern that Russia — whose economy is on a war footing because of its conflict in Ukraine — could seek to further expand, into EU territory.
Poland is about to sign a contract for “the biggest anti-drone system in Europe,” its defense minister, Wladyslaw Kosiniak-Kamysz, told the Gazeta Wyborcza daily.
Kosiniak-Kamysz did not say how much the deal, involving “different types of weaponry,” would cost, nor which consortium would ink the contract at the end of January.
He said it was being made to respond to “an urgent operational demand.”
