Christian Skaug 
Mike Pompeo under en pressekonferanse i utenriksdepartementet i Washington den 29. april 2020. Foto: Andrew Harnik / via Reuters / Scanpix.
Etter at USAs president Donald Trump sist torsdag sa at det finnes etterretning som knytter koronaviruset til laboratoriet ved Wuhan-instituttet for virologi, kom temaet opp igjen da den amerikanske utenriksminister Mike Pompeo nylig ble intervjuet av reporteren Martha Raddatz under programmet «This Week» på ABC News.
Pompeo sa først og at finnes et «enormt» grunnlagsmateriale som tyder på at viruset kom fra laboratoriet:
Martha Raddatz: And, Mr. Secretary, have you seen anything that gives you high confidence that it originated in that Wuhan lab?
Mike Pompeo: Martha, there’s enormous evidence that that’s where this began.
Vi har møtt mye motbør for å ha hevdet dette helt fra starten, sa Pompeo, som la til at Kina har en historie for laboratorier som ikke holder mål.
Deretter brukte han ordet «betydelig» om det samme belegget for virusets opphav:
And so, while the intelligence community continues to do its work, they should continue to do that, and verify so that we are certain, I can tell you that there is a significant amount of evidence that this came from that laboratory in Wuhan.
Utenriksministeren ville ikke svare klart på om han tror viruset er menneskeskapt:
Do you believe it was man-made or genetically modified?
Look, the best experts so far seem to think it was man-made. I have no reason to disbelieve that at this point.
Your — your Office of the DNI says the consensus, the scientific consensus was not man-made or genetically modified.
That’s right. I agree with that. Yeah. I’ve seen their analysis. I’ve seen the summary that you saw that was released publicly. I have no reason to doubt that that is accurate…
OK, so just to be clear, you do not think it was man-made or genetically modified?
POMPEO: I’ve seen what the intelligence community has said. I have no reason to believe that they’ve got it wrong.
Pompeo ville heller ikke ta stilling til om viruset ble spredd med hensikt eller ved et uhell:
And — and, just very quickly, if we can, Mr. Secretary, running out of time. Do you think they intentionally released that virus or it was an accident in the lab?
You know, I don’t have anything to say about that. I think there’s a lot to know. But I can say this. We’ve done our best to try and answer all of those questions. We tried to get a team in there. The World Health Organization tried to get a team in there. And they have failed. No one’s been allowed to go to this lab or any of the other laboratories — there are many labs inside of China, Martha. This risk remains.
This is an ongoing challenge. We still need to get in there. We still don’t have the virus samples we need. This is an ongoing threat, an ongoing pandemic. And the Chinese Communist Party continues to block access to the Western world, the world’s best scientists, to figure out exactly what happened.
So I can’t answer your question about that. Because the Chinese Communist Party has refused to cooperate with world health experts.
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