Chinese colonel says latest bird flu virus is U.S. biological
weapon
- BY Bill Gertz - April 9,
2013 - Associated Press
A Chinese Air Force officer
on Saturday accused the U.S. government of creating the new strain of bird flu
now afflicting parts of China as a biological warfare attack.People’s Liberation Army Sr.
Col. Dai Xu said the United States released the H7N9 bird flu virus into China
in an act of biological warfare, according to a posting on his blog on
Saturday.The charge was first reported in the state-run Guangzhou
newspaper Southern Metropolis Dailyand
then picked up by several news outlets in Asia.State Department spokesman Jason Rebholz dismissed the claim.
“There is absolutely no truth to these allegations,” he told the Washington Free
Beacon.Seven deaths from the bird flu
outbreak were reported as of Tuesday in state-run Chinese media. As many as 24
people reportedly were infected by the disease in Shanghai, Jiangsu, Zhejiang,
and Anhui.Chinese authorities are
trying to calm public fears of a major epidemic, claiming there is no evidence
the virus can be transmitted between humans.The government also is
claiming that the outbreak is not related to the recent discovery of thousands
of dead pigs floating in a river in China.The accusation of U.S.
biological warfare against China comes as the Pentagon is seeking closer
military relations with China. Army Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint
Chiefs of Staff, is set to travel to China for talks with Chinese military
leaders later this month.
Dai is a military strategist who in the past has been outspoken
in seeking to foment conflict between China and the United States. He told the Global
Times in August
that China should go to war over U.S. support for Japan’s claims to the
disputed Senkaku Islands.
Writing on Sina Weibo, a
Chinese microblogging site akin to Twitter, Dai stated that the new bird flu
strain was designed as a biological weapon similar to severe acute respiratory
syndrome (SARS), which he also claimed was developed as a U.S. bio-weapon, that
affected the country in 2003.
According to Dai’s posting,
the new flu outbreak should not be a cause for concern. “The national
leadership should not pay too much attention to it,” the PLA lecturer at the
National Defense University wrote. “Or else, it’ll be like in 2003 with SARS!”“At that time, America was
fighting in Iraq and feared that China would take advantage of the opportunity
to take other actions,” he said. “This is why they used bio-psychological
weapons against China. All of China fell into turmoil and that was exactly what
the United States wanted. Now, the United States is using the same old trick.
China should have learned its lesson and should calmly deal with the problem.”
Dai said that even if “a few
may die” from the flu outbreak, it will not equal one-thousandth of the deaths
caused by vehicle accidents in China.
Dai in the past has called
for China to punish the United States for U.S. arms sales to rival Taiwan, by
selling arms to U.S. enemies. “China recognizes that a few perfunctory protests
will not have any effect,” Dai said in 2010. “China can’t directly sanction
American arms companies since they did not do business with China … but China
can sanction companies that are doing business with China directly, like Boeing
or General Electric.”
Dai also has said the United
States has used crises with North Korea and offers of cooperation on the issue
as a plot to drive a wedge between Beijing and its fraternal communist ally.Dai also has said U.S.
efforts to counter Chinese espionage and intelligence-gathering were part of a
U.S. “plot theory” of “western countries threatening others by [releasing]
information gained through spying in order to damage the reputations of other
countries.”
A State Department official
said China notified the World Health Organization (WHO) on March 31 about its
first detected human cases of H7N9 infection. Fourteen cases were
confirmed by the WHO by April 5, of which six were fatal. The organization said
there is no evidence of human-to-human transmission.
“U.S. Embassy Beijing and
U.S. Consulate Shanghai are monitoring the situation, working closely with
counterparts at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control, and the Beijing and
Shanghai municipal governments,” the official said.
The colonel’s accusation provoked a widespread response on
Chinese websites. One post in reaction joked that Dai’s comment about auto
deaths must mean that the United States and Germany are responsible for a
conspiracy to produce cars, according to a report in Hong Kong’sSouth China Morning Post.Luo Changping, deputy editor
of Caijing, said most PLA soldiers would not support Dai’s comments and he
urged the colonel to resign and apologize to those who have died from the
current bird flu outbreak.
A defiant Dai then said in a
new posting Sunday that “it is common knowledge that a group of people in China
have been injected with mental toxin by the United States.”“Now, a group of fake
American devils are attacking me,” he wrote in another post. “I will not
retreat even half a step.”
Analysts say the colonel’s
remarks are a reflection of the growing xenophobic atmosphere within the
Chinese military that views the United States as its main enemy.
Former State Department
intelligence analyst John Tkacik said China’s military was largely to blame for
mishandling the 2003 outbreak of SARS. Tkacik said there was speculation when
the epidemic began that “the PLA suspects SARS had emanated from its own
biological laboratories and was all the more eager to keep it secret.” China is
known to have a covert biological arms program.
“Col. Dai Xu is a shameless liar when he accuses the United
States of using bio weapons,” Tkacik told the Free Beacon. “He’s
probably motivated by a desire to exculpate the PLA for their mishandling of
the epidemic—no doubt most Chinese have happily forgotten the episode—as much
as by a cynical xenophobia. But, that’s what passes for deep strategic
thought at China’s National Defense University these days.”
The Pentagon has been trying
with varying success to develop closer ties to the Chinese military as part of
a strategy aimed at building trust. However, China’s military leaders believe
the U.S. offers of closer ties are a ruse designed to contain China’s growing
military buildup.
Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel
spoke by phone with China’s Defense Minister Gen. Chang Wanquan on April 2.
Chang is the No. 4 defense official after Chinese President Xi Jinping and two
other generals who run the Central Military Commission, the Communist Party’s
ultimate power organ.
“The leaders both expressed their intention to work together to
continue to build a military-to-military relationship that serves the vision of
both President Obama and President Xi,” Pentagon press secretary George Little
said in a statement after the call.“The secretary discussed the
importance of focusing on areas of sustained dialogue, practical areas of
cooperation, and risk reducing measures,” he said.U.S. ties with China are
strained due to China’s reluctance to rein in neighboring North Korea.
China provides North Korea
with large amounts of fuel oil and other goods. However, Beijing has not taken
steps to pressure Pyongyang using its economic leverage during the ongoing
crisis.
The flu has lit up China’s
thriving Internet, according to analysts. Over 945,600 microblog postings
addressed the flu between April 8 and 9. Since the outbreak began some seven
days ago, between 1.3 million and 3 million postings were put online on outlets
including Sina Weibo and QQ Weibo.
Tens of thousands of users
expressed doubts about the official Shanghai municipal government’s denial of
any link between the dead pigs found floating last month in the region’s
Huangpu River.The proximity to the initial
outbreak in Shanghai and the river has led to speculation that the pig deaths
may have been linked to the flu virus jumping from animals to humans.That speculation was fueled
by reports that one of the victims of the flu was a pig butcher.The avian flu strain is
similar to an earlier outbreak with a significant difference: The current
strain does not kill the birds it infects, making it more difficult to identify
infected poultry.
The Shanghai government
waited 20 days before announcing the first H7N9 infection on March 31.
Apakah benar H7N9 ini peperangan saraf....dua kuasa dunia ?....
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