German Chancellor Angela Merkel and U.S. President Donald Trump are seen as they pose for a family photo at the start of the NATO summit in Brussels, Belgium July 11, 2018.
Reinhard Krause | Reuters
A German intelligence report casts doubts on U.S. allegations that COVID-19 originated in a Chinese laboratory and says the accusations are an attempt to divert attention from U.S. failure to rein in the disease, Der Spiegel magazine reported on Friday.
U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said on Sunday there was "a significant amount of evidence" that the coronavirus had emerged from a Chinese laboratory, but did not dispute U.S. intelligence agencies' conclusion that it was not man-made.
Spiegel said Germany's BND spy agency had asked members of the U.S.-led "Five Eyes" intelligence alliance for evidence to support the accusation. None of the alliance's members, the United States, Britain, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, wanted to support Pompeo's claim, it said.
An intelligence report prepared for German Defense Minister Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer concluded that the U.S. accusations were a deliberate attempt to divert public attention away from President Donald Trump's "own failures".
A German government spokesman was not immediately available for comment. Trump has said he has evidence the virus could have originated in a Chinese lab, but he has declined to elaborate.
U.S. deaths from the coronavirus exceeded 75,000 on Thursday, according to a Reuters tally, with mixed messages from the White House and state governments on how to slow the rate of infection.
Deaths in the United States, the epicenter of the pandemic, have averaged 2,000 a day since mid-April.
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May 08, 2020 at 04:42PM
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German spy agency doubts US 'China lab' coronavirus accusations, report says - CNBC
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