US intelligence report on COVID-19 origins questionable: former Maldivian president

MALE - A recent report on the origins of COVID-19 published by the US intelligence community is "questionable" and contains "opaque" evaluations, former Maldivian President Mohamed Waheed Hassan has said.

"When it comes to an issue of global health, the first priority has to be science and facts. Intuition, analysis and many intelligence generating methodologies have no place in the public health sphere," Waheed said in a recent interview with Xinhua.

"However, given the opaque nature of the evaluations used in the decision-making processes of intelligence communities, the amount of consideration given to science is questionable."

"It is concerning how politicized and slanderous the report has become in the Western press," Waheed said.

"It is likely that politicians and pundits are trying to find a way to place blame rather than supporting nations to work together for the common good," he added.

"It is clear that the intention behind keeping the anti-China narrative alive is to force compliance, rather than to seek any form of collaboration," the former president said.

The United States appears to be scapegoating foreign countries to defuse domestic ire, Waheed said. "American politicians are scrambling to find ways to lessen domestic tension, hostility and blame."

"If we had avoided this over-politicization from the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, we would have taken more science-based actions to control the outbreak, and would have minimized the mutation of the COVID-19 virus," Waheed said.

Noting that China was the first country to take severe measures to deal with the pandemic, he said, "if all nations had taken the same drastic steps, we would not be where we are today."

The former president expressed his sincere gratitude to the Chinese government and people for the generous assistance offered to the Maldives during the pandemic, which has strengthened the two countries' friendship and reinforced the foundation of future bilateral cooperation.

Waheed served as president of the Maldives from 2012 to 2013.