WASHINGTON, Aug 25, 2021 (BSS/AFP) - 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, 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 had 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
4 million people and paralysed 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, using it to deflect blame for their administration's
handling of the world's biggest outbreak and instead finger-point at
Beijing, which strongly denies the hypothesis.

   China on Wednesday urged the WHO to visit the US military biolab
Fort Detrick, after rejecting the health organization's calls for a
second stage of the Covid-19 origins probe focusing on Chinese
laboratories last month.

   "If (the United States) want to baselessly accuse China, they
better be prepared to accept a counter-attack from China," Fu Cong,
head of the foreign ministry's arms control department, told
reporters.

   "If the US thinks China is guilty, they need to come up with
evidence to prove that China is guilty. You don't blame a victim for
not providing information to incriminate himself."

   - 'Contradiction' -

   WHO's emergencies director Mike Ryan later called the Chinese
comments a "contradiction", as Beijing has fiercely pushed back
against the lab-leak theory.

   "I find that difficult to understand but am very willing to engage
with our Chinese colleagues to understand what exactly they mean by
that statement," Ryan told reporters.

   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.

   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 and then passed to humans, likely via
an intermediary species -- was widely accepted. But as time has worn
on, scientists have not found a virus in either bats or another animal
that matches the genetic signature of SARS-CoV-2.

   In the face of China's reluctance to open up to outside
investigators, experts are increasingly open to considering the theory
that the virus might have leaked out of a lab conducting bat
coronavirus research in Wuhan, an idea once dismissed as a conspiracy
propagated by the US far-right.