BLINKEN TELLS CHINA: BE TRANSPARENT ON LAB LEAK PROBE

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken stressed the need for cooperation and transparency over the origins of COVID-19 in a call with Chinese counterpart Yang Jiechi on Friday and raised other contentious topics, including China's treatment of Uyghur Muslims, Hong Kong and Taiwan.

Yang, China's top diplomat, expressed to Blinken Beijing's serious concern that some people in the United States were spreading the "absurd story" about the coronavirus escaping from a Wuhan laboratory, Tom Daly, David Brunnstrom and Michael Martina reported for Reuters.

Yang, head of the Central Foreign Affairs Commission of China's ruling Communist Party, also told Blinken that Washington should handle Taiwan-related issues "carefully and appropriately," state broadcaster CCTV reported.

The State Department said the diplomats also discussed North Korea policy and that Blinken expressed US concerns over the deterioration of democratic norms in Hong Kong and what Washington describes as the genocide of Muslim Uyghurs in China's Xinjiang region.

Blinken also called on China to stop its pressure campaign against Taiwan and to release "wrongfully detained" US and Canadian citizens, it said in a statement. The discussion on North Korea - an issue on which the United States is keen for more Chinese action to press its ally and neighbor to give up its nuclear weapons - focused on the need for Beijing and Washington "to work together for the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula."

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