U.S. President Donald Trump has threatened to withdraw altogether from the World Health Organization.
In a four-page letter detailing his grievances with the WHO, Trump called on the group to “demonstrate independence from China,” renewing a complaint that led him in April to temporarily suspend U.S. funding. He posted the letter on Twitter late Monday.
“If the World Health Organization does not commit to major substantive improvements within the next 30 days, I will make my temporary freeze of United States funding to the World Health Organization permanent and reconsider our membership in the organization,” Trump wrote to Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.
In his tweet, Trump called the letter “self-explanatory.”
Trump repeated calls for “an impartial, independent and comprehensive review” of how the WHO handled the crisis.
The World Health Assembly, the Geneva-based group’s governing body, passed a resolution Tuesday calling for an independent assessment of the global response to the pandemic, which the WHO has said it welcomes and will initiate at an unspecified time.
“The WHO is fully committed to transparency, accountability and continuous improvement,” Tedros said in closing remarks to the assembly, without commenting directly on Trump’s letter. “We want accountability more than anyone.”