Australian officials are disappointed that their desire to investigate the COVID-19 origin is undermined by the White House, which is trying to link the outbreak to a Wuhan lab, Reuters reported referring to sources.

Sources said Washington’s attack on China enabled Beijing to claim that Australia’s request for an independent investigation is part of the US agenda.

Canberra fell into a diplomatic trap between Washington, its main security ally, and already strained relations with Beijing, its main trading partner.

One government source said officials were working hard to cast the review as open-minded and global and that the American approach of “let’s get China” wasn’t helping.

Trade Minister Simon Birmingham, responding to criticisms of whether the investigation into trade with China would hurt, tried to note Australia's independence.

“We’re not doing this as some sort of lapdog of the United States,” he said. “You’ll see there are some marked differences between some of the things that the Australian Government has said and some of the commentary coming out of the United States and that’s because we take our own analysis, our own evidence, our own advice and we will take this issue through to the World Health Assembly.”

The Chinese MFA said that calls for an investigation are “political manipulation” and said Australia should “give up its ideological prejudices”.

Last weekend, Sydney’s Daily Telegraph reported a “dossier prepared by concerned Western governments” showed China had deliberately suppressed or destroyed evidence of the COVID-19 outbreak. The article was published after US President Donald Trump said he saw evidence that the cause of the COVID-19 was a leak from the Wuhan lab.

Government and intelligence officials said the document referred to in this article had public reports and newspaper articles and was not based on intelligence sources. 

“It’s a research paper. I can tell you, we aren’t paying much attention to it,” an intelligence source said.

An official familiar with the 15-page document cited in the article told Reuters that it seems to be designed to support the US position and is not part of intelligence work.

According to the source, no proposals from Australian agencies were made to the document.