Tehran, 19 May_US President Donald Trump has threatened to pull out of the World Health Organization, calling the UN health body a Chinese "puppet".
Trump said the United States might permanently freeze all of its funding to the WHO if “major substantive improvements” weren’t made in the next 30 days.
In April, Washington suspended payments to the WHO, tasked with monitoring global health, accusing it of being too deferential to China and mismanaging the coronavirus pandemic.
On Monday, Trump tweeted images of a letter he sent to WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, saying the letter was "self-explanatory."
"It is clear the repeated missteps by you and your organization in responding to the pandemic have been extremely costly for the world. The only way forward for the World Health Organization is if it can actually demonstrate independence from China," Trump said in the letter.
Trump said, "They're a puppet of China, they're China-centric to put it nicer."
He said the US pays around $450 million annually to the WHO, "but, we're not treated right. They gave us a lot of bad advice."
“Plans are being crafted to slash the funding,” Trump said at the White House.
The US president, who is under fire over his handling of the virus crisis in the country, spoke as the WHO held its first annual assembly since the pandemic swept the world after originating in China, killing 316,000 people — close to a third of them in the United States.
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