China will risk international isolation if it does not allow a “real” investigation in its territory into the origins of the virus that caused the COVID-19 pandemic, said US national security adviser Jake Sullivan.
Sullivan’s comments follow last week’s call from G7 leaders, including US President Joe Biden, for another investigation into how the virus originated. Last month, Biden ordered the US intelligence community to “redouble” its efforts to determine where the coronavirus was coming from and to report back within 90 days.
The goal is to present China “with a difficult choice: either they will responsibly allow investigators to do the real work of figuring out where this came from, or they will face isolation in the international community,” Sullivan said in an interview on “Fox. News Sunday ”.
The United States will continue to press in cooperation with its allies and partners “until we get to the bottom of how this virus got into the world and who has responsibility for it.”
China has rejected the theory that the virus originated in a laboratory in Wuhan, the Chinese city where the first cases were reported.
The World Health Organization, which previously sent a mission to China to report on the origins of the virus, is expected to lead a second investigation separately from the US intelligence effort.
“Right now we are not going to issue threats or ultimatums,” Sullivan said on CNN’s “State of the Union.” If China does not meet its obligations, “we will have to consider our responses at that time and we will do so in concert with allies and partners,” he said.
“We are not just going to accept China saying no,” Sullivan said.
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