China urges US 'not to politicize' Covid origin research

China urged the US to stop politicizing the research for the origins of the Covid-19 pandemic, and to invite the WHO to investigate Fort Detrick and the University of North Carolina on the basis of "reciprocity".

The Director-General of the Arms Control Department of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Fu Cong, said that if the US accepts an origin-tracing investigation in their labs, then China would accept similar visits.
A classified US intelligence report delivered to the White House on Tuesday was inconclusive on the origins of the Covid-19 pandemic, in part due to a lack of information from China, according to US media reports. 
The assessment, which was ordered by President Joe Biden 90 days ago, was unable to definitively conclude whether the virus that first emerged in central China had jumped to humans via animals or escaped a highly secure research facility in Wuhan, two US officials familiar with the matter told the Washington Post.
They said parts of the report could be declassified in the coming days.
The debate over the origins of the virus that has killed more than four million people and paralyzed economies worldwide has become increasingly contentious.
When Biden assigned the investigation, he said US intelligence agencies were split over the "two likely scenarios" -- animals or lab.
Former president Donald Trump and his aides had helped fuel the lab-leak theory amid intense criticism over their administration's handling of the world's biggest outbreak, pointing the finger at Beijing, which strongly denies the hypothesis. 
Despite Biden's directive that the intelligence community "redouble their efforts" to untangle the origin debate, the 90-day review brought them no closer to consensus, the officials told the Post. 
Part of the problem is a lack of detailed information from China, according to the Wall Street Journal. 
"If China's not going to give access to certain data sets, you're never really going to know," an official told the Journal on condition of anonymity since the report is not public.
Beijing has rejected calls from the United States and other countries for a renewed origin probe after a heavily politicized visit by a World Health Organization team in January also proved inconclusive and faced criticism for lacking transparency and access. 
Pressure has meanwhile increased to evaluate the lab-leak theory more thoroughly.
At the outset of the pandemic, the natural origin hypothesis -- that the virus emerged in bats then passed to humans, likely via an intermediary species -- was widely accepted.