The spokesman for the White House Security Council, John Kirby, defended this Monday the action of the United States in shooting down the Chinese spy balloon that had been flying over the national territory for several days and assured that international law was respected.
(In addition: The balloon that flies over Latin America is also Chinese: what is its objective?)
“The United States acted in accordance with international law and in defense of our homeland and our sovereign airspace,” he said in a conversation with the press, two days following the North American country shot down the balloon with a missile, in front of the South Carolina waters.
(You can read: China is grateful that Latin American countries do not see a threat in the ‘spy balloon’)
The demolition, Kirby specified, was made “regarding six miles from the coast within our territorial airspace so that we might comply with international law”“unlike the Chinese, who failed to comply with international law by flying over US sovereign airspace.”
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The United States acted in accordance with international law and in defense of our homeland and our sovereign airspace.
“We are absolutely within our right to throw the balloon at them and we are going to recover as much as we can to learn from their mission,” he said.
Kirby responded to China in this way following Vice Foreign Minister Xie Feng accused the country of overreacting and “seriously violating the spirit of international law” with “indiscriminate use of force.”
(Keep reading: China expresses anger over the downing of its ‘spy balloon’ in the US)
The Chinese official added that China will protect the legitimate rights and interests of Chinese companies and “defend the interests and dignity of the country,” a phrase that has set off all the alarms of a possible conflict between the two powers.
However, Kirby tried to downplay the incident by assuring that “there is no reason” for the tensions in the bilateral relationship “to lead to some kind of conflict.”
For this reason, he specified, the visit of the Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, to the Asian country that was to start this weekend “has not been cancelled, but has been postponed.”
Despite China continuing to maintain that the balloon was part of a civilian mission seeking to obtain weather data, the United States continues to maintain that it has sufficient evidence that the balloon was seeking to spy on sensitive national security sites.
(See also: Video: The United States announces that it shot down the Chinese ‘spy balloon’)
“They want you to believe that it was some kind of innocent weather balloon that just floated in the air. We know they had control over his speed and direction and we believe he was conducting surveillance on hypersensitive military sites inside the United States.“, accurate.
Despite the incident, Kirby assured that the vision of the president, Joe Biden, that the relationship with China is “very important” has not changed, and insisted that the United States does not seek a conflict with China.
(Also read: The spy balloon raid that further strained relations between the US and China)
“There is no doubt that relations between the US and China, even before this incident, were tense. That is one of the reasons why it was so important for the president to meet with President Xi Jinping at the G20. “, he recounted.
The meeting that took place in November in Bali served to “begin to work on how to restart some of the communication vehicles that the Chinese closed as a result of the visit of the president (of the House of Representatives, Nancy) Pelosi to the island of Taiwan”.
EFE