The United States on May 8 stunned the 15 UNSC members (5 permanent and 10 non-permanent) by preventing a vote on a resolution for a ceasefire in various conflict zones around the world to help troubled nations better fight the coronavirus pandemic, diplomats said. Needless to say, the latest stalemate continues to leave the global peace and security Organisation largely marred by unpredictability amid the growing pandemic that has killed more than 270,000 people and raised harrowing fears for the global health regime. US diplomats told reporters later that ongoing disagreements with China were a factor in this decision. China had “repeatedly blocked compromises that would have allowed the Council to move forward,” one diplomat told AFP news agency. But history is evident that it is not for the first time that the US has halted a peace move. “In our view, the Council should either proceed with a resolution limited to support for a ceasefire or a broadened resolution that fully addresses the need for renewed member state commitment to transparency and accountability in the context of COVID-19,” said a US State Department representative. The draft procedure highlighted the “urgent need to support all countries, as well as all relevant entities of the United Nations system, including specialized health agencies.” This was seen as an implicit reference to the WHO but did not directly name the UN agency in order to appease the US. The UNSC has been striving for more than six weeks over the resolution, which was intended to demonstrate global support for the call for a ceasefire by the UN secretary general, António Guterres. The rift between Washington and Beijing continues to grow, as the US calls on China to be transparent and provide more information to the world about the origin of the virus and China alleges that the US is telling lies about the virus’s origin. The US- China rift deepens over the origins of the coronavirus. President Donald Trump maintains that the virus came from a Chinese lab but Beijing says there is no evidence of that Recently, the conflict escalation between China and the US began to start in March, as the pandemic raged across the globe, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian publicly promoted an unfounded conspiracy theory that the virus might have been brought to China by the US military. A few days later, US President Donald Trump called the coronavirus the “Chinese virus,” pinning the blame on China as the outbreak began to take hold in major American cities. And also, when Beijing expelled three Wall Street Journal reporters in response to a headline that called China the “sick man of Asia.” The Trump administration responded by imposing new limits on the number of Chinese nationals working for Chinese state media outlets in the U.S., reducing the number from 160 to 100. Then, subsequently, China announced it was revoking the press credentials of more than a dozen American foreign correspondents at the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and Washington Post, effectively gutting the U.S. press corps in the mainland. Since then, several Chinese staff working for U.S. media outlets have also been forced out of their jobs. Amidst the growing coronavirus crisis, one relationship that is gaining even more gravity of attention is that between the two most powerful countries in the world: the United States and China. The US- China rift deepens over the origins of the coronavirus. President Donald Trump maintains that the virus came from a Chinese lab but Beijing says there is no evidence of that. Trump has intensified his rhetoric against China recently and some analysts say this is a pre-election gambit. Trump is using the China card as a fig leaf to conceal his declining popularity. The fact remains that when the coronavirus was beginning to seize the world, Ant?nio Guterres, the UN secretary issued a call for a global ceasefire. “The fury of the virus illustrates the folly of war,” he declared. His peace-ridden ambition, echoed by Pope Francis and others, was meant to secure a respite for those countries and regions engulfed by violence and conflict amid the fatally growing pandemic. And yet not surprisingly, many armed groups around the world appeared to be listening. The United Nations Security Council backed calls for an immediate ceasefire in Yemen to focus efforts on fighting the COVID-19 pandemic on April 17. The UN under-secretary-general for humanitarian affairs Mark Lowcock had earlier briefed the Council (on April 16) on the status of humanitarian aid in Yemen. He reiterated that “epidemiologists warn that COVID-19 in Yemen could spread faster, more widely and with deadlier consequences than in many other countries.” The WHO estimates that 80 percent of health services in Yemen could end by May without funds. According to the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), these humanitarian programmes assist 13 million Yemenis each month, supporting 3,100 health facilities, providing 17 million medical consultations, and positively enabling access to clean water for more than 11 million people. The peace advocates at the UN were of the view that the ceasefires will make it possible to get medical supplies and food into war-torn countries threatened by Covid-19. The World Food Programme (WFP) warned recently that millions of people in about three dozen countries, many of them conflict-zones, are now at risk of famines of biblical proportions because of the economic collapse caused by the pandemic. Once a temporary ceasefire is in place, UN officials feel optimistic that lasting peace could be negotiated. While offering a comment on the Trump administration’s move to halt the resolution, a western security diplomat said, “We understood that there was an agreement on this thing but it seems that they changed their mind. “Obviously they have changed their mind within the American system so that wording is still not good enough for them,” another diplomat close to the discussions said. Unfortunately, with US blocking of the UNSC ceasefire resolution, the promising horizon of the UN’s peace diplomacy is eclipsed by the power-politics of the global powers. The ceasefire violation is a major threat to global peace. Summoning the Indian diplomat over the LoC violation on May 5, Pakistan Foreign Office expressed a genuine security concern as the Indian occupation forces have continuously been targeting civilian populated areas with artillery fire, heavy-calibre mortars and automatic weapons along the LoC and the Working Boundary. In 2020, India has enormously committed 989 ceasefire violations. The global powers must not underestimate the perilous intensity of the South Asian conflict where India’s anti-peace trajectory of infringing the ceasefire line may, any time, create a harrowing war-like scenario. Nevertheless, India’s euphoric design to subjugate the Kashmiri territory by dint of force will never be embraced since Pakistan Armed Forces have the endowment to throw cold water on India’s cold start doctrine. The writer is an independent ‘IR’ researcher and international law analyst based in Pakistan