New Delhi: US President Joe Biden on Thursday said that there is no indication that the three flying objects shot down in North America recently are linked to China’s ‘spy’ balloon program adding that he will speak to his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping on the matter, reported CNN.
Biden Speaks On Downed Flying Objects
In his first official remarks on the shooting down of the objects, Biden said, “We don’t yet know exactly what these three objects were but nothing right now suggests they were related to China’s spy balloon program or that they were surveillance vehicles from any other country.”
“The intelligence community’s current assessment is that these three objects were most likely balloons tied to private companies, recreation or research institutions studying weather or conducting other scientific research,” he further said, as quoted by CNN.
According to the report, the comments came four days after the last known object was shot down on Sunday after Biden faced increasing pressure to be more transparent about the entire situation.
The US President emphasised that there hasn’t been evidence to suggest “a sudden increase in the number of objects in the sky.” And although the most recent three objects appear to have been benign, Biden warned, “If any object presents a threat to the safety and security of the American people, I will take it down,” CNN mentioned in its report.
Biden said he has directed his team to devise “sharper rules for how we will deal with these unidentified objects moving forward, distinguishing between those that are likely to pose safety and security risks that necessitate action and those that do not.” He added that those classified parameters will be shared with Congress when they are finished.
As per the report, he also said that he’s directing national security adviser Jake Sullivan to lead a “government-wide effort” for how to address future encounters with similar high-altitude objects.
The US administration will be putting an improved inventory of unmanned airborne objects above American airspace, reported CNN adding that further measures will be implemented to detect the objects, update rules and regulations for encounters with these types of objects above US skies, and establishing common global norms for similar encounters.
On Talks With Chinese President Xi Jinping
Biden said he expects to speak with Chinese President Xi Jinping on the matter, along with keeping allies and Congress informed.
“And I hope we are going to get to the bottom of this, but I make no apologies for taking down that balloon,” he added, quoted CNN.
As per the CNN report, federal officials in US have said that the Chinese ‘surveillance’ balloon downed off the coast of South Carolina was capable of conducting signals intelligence collection operations and had a payload around the size of three buses.
The subsequent objects, which haven’t been attributed to a specific country or entity, are believed to be much smaller than that, they added.
"We are not looking for a new cold war," Biden said, quoted Reuters. However, Biden did not say when he would speak with Xi but said that the United States was continuing to engage diplomatically with China on the issue.
According to Reuters, after his speech, Biden told NBC News, “I think the last thing that Xi wants is to fundamentally rip the relationship with the United States and with me."
China says the 200-foot (60-meter) balloon shot down was for monitoring weather conditions, but Washington maintained that the balloon was clearly a surveillance object with a massive undercarriage containing electronics, mentioned Reuters.
Asked in advance about Biden's remarks, Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin on Thursday referred to the downed balloon as an "unmanned civilian airship," adding that its flight into US airspace was an "isolated" incident.
As per a Reuters report, Wenbin said, "The US should be willing to meet China in the middle, manage differences and appropriately handle isolated, unexpected incidents to avoid misunderstandings and misjudgments; and promote the return of US-China relations to a healthy and stable development track."
Earlier, Beijing had warned of "countermeasures against relevant US entities that undermine China's sovereignty and security".
According to Reuters, on Thursday, China put Lockheed Martin Corp (LMT.N) and a unit of Raytheon Technologies Corp (RTX.N) on an "unreliable entities list" over arms sales to Taiwan, banning them from imports and exports related to China in its latest sanctions against the US companies.