The Chinese Government confirmed this Monday that balloon detected Latin AmericaThis device, similar to the one that was dropped over the Atlantic Ocean by United States forces on Saturday, is also his own, but he still insisted that it was only his possession. “civil purposes”.
This is the second balloon entered “accidentally” in the airspace of various countries, including ColombiaChinese Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Mao Ning explained the situation in his statements to the press, forced by the weather conditions.
He stressed that China respects and does not “represent” International Law. No danger for any country.” However, Mao declined to answer specific questions about the exact reasons for the attack. loss of control of balloons in such a short time: “I’m not an expert”.
“Irresponsible”
What the spokesman insisted on was to classify the decision taken by the US authorities as “unacceptable and irresponsible” in the face of what Beijing sees as shameful. “isolated event”, According to statements collected by the Bloomberg agency.
Chinese Deputy Foreign Minister Xie Feng made a referral to the US Embassy in China. government disturbance. China “strongly and strongly opposes the conflict and” the right to take further action As a response”, the official CGTN channel is still to be clarified.
The United States Department of Defense reported the presence of a second Chinese balloon over Latin America this Friday night, and the Colombian Air Force confirmed its sighting over the weekend. The Venezuelan Ministry of Foreign Affairs, on the other hand, agreed with China’s arguments and condemned the destruction of the first device.
Respect for international law
White House Security Council spokesman John Kirby defended the US actions to lower the bubble and assured that international law was respected.
“The United States acted in accordance with international law and to defend our homeland and sovereign airspace,” he said in a press conference two days after Washington shot down the balloon with a missile off the coast of South Carolina.
“We have the right to throw balloons at them, and we will learn as much as we can from their mission.”it was stress.
China continues to argue that the balloon is part of a civilian mission. get weather dataThe United States continues to claim that it has sufficient evidence that the world is trying to spy on sensitive sites for national security.
Despite the incident, Kirby assured that US President Joe Biden’s view that relations with China were “very important” remained unchanged and insisted that the US was not seeking a conflict with China.
“There is no doubt that US-China Relations, even before this incident they were nervous. “This is one of the reasons why it is so important for the president to meet with Chinese President Xi Jinping at the G20,” he said.
The meeting, which was held in Bali (Indonesia) in November, served to “start work on how to restart some communication tools that China had shut down as a result of the visit of President (House of Representatives, Nancy) Pelosi.” to the island of Taiwan.
Three balloons in the Trump era
John Kirby further argued that: at when donald trump was president (2017-2021), at least three Chinese balloons flew over the United States.
“At least three times, PRC surveillance balloons have passed through our airspace. From all indications we have, I will say that these were short periods of time, unlike anything we saw last week in terms of duration,” he said. in a meeting with the media.
The existence of these balloons was discovered during the Joe Biden Government, under circumstances Kirby did not want to disclose, and It is not clear that Trump knew this at the time.
“I cannot speak of the previous administration’s awareness of these events. I can say that we discovered these flights after we came to power, and I will not go into the details of how we did it.”
through social networks, Trump said on Sunday that no Chinese “spy balloons” had flown over the United States under his administration.