Countries struggle to draft 'pandemic treaty' to avoid mistakes made during COVID

GENEVA (AP) — After the coronavirus pandemic triggered once-unthinkable lockdowns, upended economies and killed millions, leaders at the World Health Organization and worldwide vowed to do better in the future. Years later, countries are still struggling to come up with an agreed-upon plan for how the world might respond to the next global outbreak.

A ninth and final round of talks involving governments, advocacy groups and others to finalize a “pandemic treaty” is scheduled to end Friday. The accord's aim: guidelines for how the WHO's 194 member countries might stop future pandemics and better share scarce resources. But experts warn there are virtually no consequences for countries that don’t comply.

WHO’s countries asked the U.N. health agency to oversee talks for a pandemic agreement in 2021. Envoys have been working long hours in recent weeks to prepare a draft ahead of a self-imposed deadline later this month: ratification of the accord at WHO's annual meeting. But deep divisions could derail it.

U.S. Republican senators wrote a letter to the Biden administration last week critical of the draft for focusing on issues like “shredding intellectual property rights” and “supercharging the WHO." They urged Biden not to sign off.

Britain's department of health said it would only agree to an accord if it was “firmly in the U.K. national interest and respects national sovereignty.”

And many developing countries say it's unfair that they might be expected to provide virus samples to help develop vaccines and treatments, but then be unable to afford them.

“This pandemic treaty is a very high-minded pursuit, but it doesn’t take political realities into account,” said Sara Davies, a professor of international relations at Griffith University in Australia.

For example, the accord is attempting to address the gap that occurred between COVID-19 vaccines in rich and poorer countries, which WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said amounted to “a catastrophic moral failure.”

The draft says WHO should get 20% of the production of pandemic-related products like tests, treatments and vaccines and urges countries to disclose their deals with private companies.

“There’s no mechanism within WHO to make life really difficult for any countries that decide not to act in accordance with the treaty," Davies said.

Adam Kamradt-Scott, a global health expert at Harvard University, said that similar to the global climate agreements, the draft pandemic treaty would at least provide a new forum for countries to try to hold each other to account, where governments will have to explain what measures they’ve taken.

The pandemic treaty "is not about anyone telling the government of a country what it can do and what it cannot do,” said Roland Driece, co-chair of WHO’s negotiating board for the agreement.

There are legally binding obligations under the International Health Regulations, including quickly reporting dangerous new outbreaks. But those have been flouted repeatedly, including by African countries during Ebola outbreaks and China in the early stages of COVID-19.

Suerie Moon, co-director of the Global Health Center at Geneva’s Graduate Institute, said it was critical to determine the expected role of WHO during a pandemic and how outbreaks might be stopped before spreading globally.

“If we fail to seize this window of opportunity which is closing … we’ll be just as vulnerable as we were in 2019,” she warned.

Some countries appear to be moving on their own to ensure cooperation from others in the next pandemic. Last month, President Joe Biden’s administration said it would help 50 countries respond to new outbreaks and prevent global spread, giving the country leverage should it need critical information or materials in the future.

Yuanqiong Hu, a senior legal and policy adviser at Doctors without Borders, said it’s unclear what might be different in the next pandemic, but hoped that focusing attention on some of the glaring errors that emerged in COVID-19 might help.

“We will mostly have to rely on countries to do better,” she said. “That is worrisome.”

Cheng reported from London.

The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Science and Educational Media Group. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

FILE - The body of a COVID-19 victim waits to be retrieved from the morgue, after she passed away the previous night at Clinicas Hospital in San Lorenzo, Paraguay, Monday, April 26, 2021. (AP Photo/Jorge Saenz, File)

FILE - A woman wearing white protective gear mourns after a glimpse of her husband's body, a victim of COVID-19, at a cremation ground in Gauhati, India, Thursday, Sept. 10, 2020. (AP Photo/Anupam Nath, File)

FILE - A cargo flight containing over 6 million medical items including face masks, test kits, face shields and protective suits arrives in the capital Addis Ababa, Ethiopia Sunday, March 22, 2020. The supplies arriving from Guangzhou, China for fighting the spread in Africa of the COVID-19 coronavirus were donated by the Jack Ma Foundation and Alibaba Foundation and will be distributed from Ethiopia to countries throughout Africa. (AP Photo/Mulugeta Ayene, File)

FILE - Relatives attend a burial service of a person who died from complications related to COVID-19 at the Vila Formosa cemetery in Sao Paulo, Brazil, Thursday, March 11, 2021. (AP Photo/Andre Penner, File)

FILE - Hundreds of beds are lined up at a temporary field hospital set up at the Asia World Expo in Hong Kong, Saturday, Aug. 1, 2020. (AP Photo/Kin Cheung, File)

FILE - Residents from the Alexandra township in Johannesburg gather in a stadium to be tested for COVID-19 Wednesday, April 29, 2020. (AP Photo/Jerome Delay, File)

FILE - Medical staff wait for the next in line for a throat and nasal swab at a COVID-19 testing facility of the Municipal Health Authority GGD, in Utrecht, Netherlands, Wednesday, Dec. 16, 2020. (AP Photo/Peter Dejong, File)

FILE - Sri Lankan health workers carry the body of a person to test for COVID-19 before handing over them to families in Colombo, Sri Lanka, Wednesday, Aug. 11, 2021. (AP Photo/Eranga Jayawardena, File)

FILE - Workers in a Molecular Biology Lab in the SinoVac vaccine factory in Beijing on Thursday, Sept. 24, 2020. (AP Photo/Ng Han Guan, File)

FILE - A man reacts as a nasal swab sample is collected from him to test for a COVID in Bangkok, Thailand, Wednesday, May 6, 2020. (AP Photo/Gemunu Amarasinghe, File)

FILE - A man crosses a street against the backdrop of One World Trade Center at dusk in New York, on Saturday, March 21, 2020. (AP Photo/Wong Maye-E, File)

FILE - A woman wearing a protective face mask stands near a fire lit next to her brother's grave in a cemetery in Herasti, Romania, during a Orthodox Palm Sunday memorial for the departed on Saturday, April 11, 2020. The cemetery, usually crowded for the Palm Sunday ritual, which gathers believers before midnight to light fires at the graves and share food in memory of their dead relatives, was nearly empty as people observed the interdiction to join religious celebrations in the week leading to the Orthodox Easter imposed across Romania as authorities try to limit the spread of the COVID-19 coronavirus. (AP Photo/Vadim Ghirda, File)

FILE - A man wearing a face masks travels in a virtually empty metro in Brussels, Thursday, March 19, 2020, during lockdown measures following in the steps of European neighbours Italy, Spain and France. For most people, the new coronavirus causes only mild or moderate symptoms, such as fever and cough. For some, especially older adults and people with existing health problems, it can cause more severe illness, including pneumonia. (AP Photo/Francisco Seco, File)

FILE - Men in personal protective suits cremate the bodies of COVID-19 victims as the number of deaths rise near Pashupatinath temple in Kathmandu, Nepal, Wednesday, May 5, 2021. (AP Photo/Niranjan Shrestha, File)

FILE - Vials of the CoronaVac COVID-19 vaccine are pictured at the Saidal factory in Constantine, Algeria, on Wednesday, Sept. 29, 2021, as the country's first home-produced coronavirus vaccines came off the assembly line as part of a cooperation deal with the makers of China's Sinovac vaccine. (AP Photo, File)

FILE - An employee takes the fingerprints of a woman who died from the new coronavirus before her remains are cremated at La Recoleta crematorium in Santiago, Chile, Saturday, June 27, 2020. Countries are still struggling to come up with an agreed-upon plan for how the world might respond to the next global outbreak. A ninth and final round of talks involving governments, advocacy groups and others to finalize a “pandemic treaty” is scheduled to end Friday, May 10, 2024. (AP Photo/Esteban Felix, File)

JERUSALEM (AP) — The helicopter crash in which Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi, the country’s foreign minister and other officials were killed is likely to reverberate across the Middle East, where Iran’s influence runs wide and deep.

That's because Iran has spent decades supporting armed groups and militants in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Yemen and the Palestinian territories, allowing it to project power and potentially deter attacks from the United States or Israel, the sworn enemies of its 1979 Islamic Revolution.

Tensions have never been higher than they were last month, when Iran under Raisi and Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei launched hundreds of drones and ballistic missiles at Israel in response to an airstrike on an Iranian Consulate in Syria that killed two Iranian generals and five officers.

Israel, with the help of the United States, Britain, Jordan and others, intercepted nearly all the projectiles. In response, Israel apparently launched its own strike against an air defense radar system in the Iranian city of Isfahan, causing no casualties but sending an unmistakable message.

The sides have waged a shadow war of covert operations and cyberattacks for years, but the exchange of fire in April was their first direct military confrontation.

The ongoing war between Israel and Hamas has drawn in other Iranian allies, with each attack and counterattack threatening to set off a wider war.

It's a combustible mix that could be ignited by unexpected events, such as Sunday's deadly crash.

Israel has long viewed Iran as its greatest threat because of Tehran's controversial nuclear program, its ballistic missiles and its support for armed groups sworn to Israel's destruction.

Iran views itself as the chief patron of Palestinian resistance to Israeli rule, and top officials for years have called for Israel to be wiped off the map.

Raisi, who was a hard-liner viewed as a protégé and possible successor of Khamenei, chastised Israel last month, saying “the Zionist Israeli regime has been committing oppression against the people of Palestine for 75 years.”

“First of all we have to expel the usurpers, secondly we should make them pay the cost for all the damages they have created, and thirdly, we have to bring to justice the oppressor and usurper," he said.

Israel is believed to have carried out numerous attacks over the years targeting senior Iranian military officials and nuclear scientists.

There is no evidence Israel was involved in Sunday's helicopter crash, and Israeli officials have not commented on the incident.

Arab countries on the Persian Gulf have also long viewed Iran with suspicion, a key factor in the decision of the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain to normalize relations with Israel in 2020, and of Saudi Arabia to consider such a move.

Iran has provided financial and other support over the years to the Palestinian militant group Hamas, which led the Oct. 7 attack into Israel that triggered the Gaza war, and the smaller but more radical Palestinian Islamic Jihad, which took part in it. But there is no evidence that Iran was directly involved in the attack.

Since the start of the war, Iran's leaders have expressed solidarity with the Palestinians. Their allies in the region have gone much further.

Lebanon's Hezbollah militant group, Iran's most militarily advanced proxy, has waged a low-intensity conflict with Israel since the start of the Gaza war. The two sides have traded strikes on a near-daily basis along the Israel-Lebanon border, forcing tens of thousands of people on both sides to flee.

So far, however, the conflict has not boiled over into a full-blown war that would be disastrous for both countries.

Iran-backed militias in Syria and Iraq launched repeated attacks on U.S. bases in the opening months of the war but pulled back after U.S. retaliatory strikes for a drone attack that killed three American soldiers in January.

Yemen's Houthi rebels, another ally of Iran, have repeatedly targeted international shipping in what they portray as a blockade of Israel. Those strikes, which often target ships with no apparent links to Israel, have also drawn U.S.-led retaliation.

Iran's influence extends beyond the Middle East and its rivalry with Israel.

Israel and Western countries have long suspected Iran of pursuing nuclear weapons in the guise of a peaceful atomic program in what they see as a threat to non-proliferation everywhere.

Then-President Donald Trump's withdrawal from a landmark nuclear pact between Iran and world powers in 2018, and his imposition of crushing sanctions, led Iran to gradually abandon all the limits placed on its program by the deal.

These days, Iran is enriching uranium to up to 60% purity — near weapons-grade levels of 90%. Surveillance cameras installed by the U.N. nuclear agency have been disrupted, and Iran has barred some of the agency's most experienced inspectors. Iran has always insisted its nuclear program is for purely peaceful purposes, but the United States and others believe it had an active nuclear weapons program until 2003.

Israel is widely believed to be the only nuclear-armed power in the Middle East but has never acknowledged having such weapons.

Iran has also emerged as a key ally of Russia following its invasion of Ukraine, and is widely accused of supplying exploding drones that have wreaked havoc on Ukraine's cities. Raisi himself denied the allegations last fall in an interview with The Associated Press, saying Iran had not supplied such weapons since the outbreak of hostilities in February 2022.

Iranian officials have made contradictory comments about the drones, while U.S. and European officials say the sheer number being used in the war in Ukraine shows that the flow of such weapons has intensified since the war began.

In this photo provided by Moj News Agency, rescue teams' vehicles are seen near the site of the incident of the helicopter carrying Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi in Varzaghan in northwestern Iran, Sunday, May 19, 2024. A helicopter carrying President Raisi, the country's foreign minister and other officials apparently crashed in the mountainous northwest reaches of Iran on Sunday, sparking a massive rescue operation in a fog-shrouded forest as the public was urged to pray. (Azin Haghighi/Moj News Agency via AP)

An Iranian woman prays for President Ebrahim Raisi in a ceremony at Vali-e-Asr square in downtown Tehran, Iran, Sunday, May 19, 2024. A helicopter carrying President Raisi, the country's foreign minister and other officials apparently crashed in the mountainous northwest reaches of Iran on Sunday, sparking a massive rescue operation in a fog-shrouded forest as the public was urged to pray. (AP Photo/Vahid Salemi)

People pray for President Ebrahim Raisi in a ceremony at Vali-e-Asr square in downtown Tehran, Iran, Sunday, May 19, 2024. A helicopter carrying President Raisi, the country's foreign minister and other officials apparently crashed in the mountainous northwest reaches of Iran on Sunday, sparking a massive rescue operation in a fog-shrouded forest as the public was urged to pray. (AP Photo/Vahid Salemi)

FILE - People gather around a component from an intercepted ballistic missile that fell near the Dead Sea in Israel, Saturday, April 20, 2024. The apparent crash of a helicopter carrying Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi, the country's foreign minister and other top officials is likely to reverberate across the Middle East. Tensions have soared since the start of the Israel-Hamas war, and Israel and Iran directly traded fire for the first time ever in April. (AP Photo/Itamar Grinberg, File)

FILE - Iranian worshippers chant slogans during an anti-Israeli gathering after Friday prayers in Tehran, Iran, Friday, April 19, 2024. The apparent crash of a helicopter carrying Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi, the country's foreign minister and other top officials is likely to reverberate across the Middle East. Tensions have soared since the start of the Israel-Hamas war, and Israel and Iran directly traded fire for the first time ever in April. (AP Photo/Vahid Salemi, File)