BRUSSELS, Jan. 19 (Reuters) - The world needs American leadership in the battle against COVID-19, the EU’s top diplomat said, urging President-elect Joe Biden to step up after the Trump administration was widely criticised for its slow response to the pandemic.

With rich countries contracting far more doses of various coronavirus vaccines than poorer ones, European Union foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said it was up to the United States to retake its place as “an engine of the world” and help.

“The world will face this year one of the biggest challenges to vaccinating humankind. This will require a lot of solidarity, a lot of cooperation and quite a lot of resources,” Borrell told Reuters in an interview.

“This is the first global crisis in which the American leadership has been missing and the world needs American leadership,” Borrell said, pledging EU support to Washington.

In a pandemic that has killed almost 400,000 Americans and threatened the U.S. economy, President Donald Trump’s handling of the virus has been criticised at home, weakening any broad international response.

Borrell also proposed rebuilding transatlantic ties after the Trump era, describing his ‘America First’ approach as governing by Twitter.

“Only with two things, the U.S. coming back to the climate agreement and rejoining the nuclear deal with Iran, the world will much better and more secure,” he said on Trump’s last full day as president.

“After governing by tweeting, maybe we can go to governing using another way of communication, defining positions and taking into the account the problems and interests of others,” Borrell said from his office in the European Commision.