Originally, the foreign ministers of the G-7 member states had been slated to meet in Pittsburgh this week, […]. Instead, they met on Wednesday for four hours by video conference in the first meeting of its kind, spanning 13 different time zones.[…]
According to European diplomatic sources, the idea of issuing a joint G-7 statement had to be abandoned because the members couldn’t come to an agreement on the language to be used to describe the pandemic.
The sources said that the State Department had demanded that it be called the “Wuhan virus” in the statement, a reflection of U.S. President Donald Trump’s insistence on calling it the “Chinese virus” in press conferences and on Twitter.
But the other G-7 states rejected a term that suggests that the pandemic is a Chinese problem. They instead proposed using the official COVID-19 name used by the World Health Organization. […]
The idea […] was initiated in France. Germany supported the call, but the U.S. initially rejected the idea. […]
Full article at Der Spiegel
