Washington (EFE) for putting him down
“I look forward to speaking with President Xi and I want to get to the bottom of this matter. But I am not going to apologize for bringing down that balloon,” the president said in an appearance before the press at the White House.
Biden also warned that he will not hesitate to shoot down any flying object that poses a threat to the American people.
The Chinese “spy” balloon was located in late January in US airspace and was shot down over Atlantic waters on February 4. It had been flying over several areas of the country for days, such as the state of Montana (northwest), where one of the three existing nuclear missile silo fields in the United States is located.
For its part, the Chinese government has claimed that the balloon entered US airspace by mistakenly deviating from its trajectory and claims that it was used for meteorological purposes, not espionage.
A strained relationship with China due to recent events
In addition to the “spy” balloon, the United States has shot down three other flying objects in its territory and Canada in the last week, the origin of which is being investigated by US and Canadian authorities.
Biden said those latest flying objects do not appear to have any link to the Chinese “spy” balloon and that, in fact, US intelligence believes they were “probably balloons linked to private companies, recreational institutions” or research that They are dedicated to studying meteorological phenomena or doing other scientific investigations.
The president added that there has not been an increase in flying objects in US airspace and attributed the recent downing of those objects to changes in the frequency of the radars made by the Armed Forces after detecting the “spy” balloon. Chinese.
To address this situation, Biden has said that his National Security Adviser, Jake Sullivan, is developing new rules on flying object detection to incorporate into the national defense strategy.
After years of tensions with the government of Republican Donald Trump (2017-2021), Biden and Xi met for the first time as presidents last year at the G20 in Bali in an attempt to reduce tensions and prevent a rivalry between the two powers. lead to open conflict.
However, the discovery of the “spy balloons” has revived tensions and led to the suspension of a trip to China that Secretary of State Antony Blinken was planning to make.