The balloon incident has escalated tensions between China and the US
Beijing:
Beijing rejected a request for a secure call between Pentagon chief Lloyd Austin and his counterpart on the day a US warplane shot down a suspected Chinese surveillance balloon, a US Defense Department spokesman said Tuesday.
“On Saturday, Feb. 4, immediately after taking action to bring down the PRC balloon, the DOD requested a secure call between Secretary Austin and PRC Secretary of National Defense Wei Fenghe,” Brigadier General Pat Ryder said. in a statement, referring to the People’s Republic of China.
“Unfortunately, the People’s Republic of China has declined our request. Our commitment to open lines of communication will continue,” Ryder added.
China says the balloon was a wandering weather observation aircraft with no military purpose, but Washington has described it as a sophisticated high-altitude spy vehicle.
After traveling slowly through the central United States, reportedly over several top-secret military locations, the balloon took off over the East Coast, where a fighter jet shot it down on Saturday.
Austin and Wei met in Cambodia last November as Washington and Beijing attempted to lower temperatures following a visit by then-Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi that enraged China.
But the balloon incident has heightened tensions and prompted US Secretary of State Antony Blinken to cancel a rare trip to Beijing.
On Monday, President Joe Biden defended the decision to wait for the balloon to cross the country to bring it down, saying the Defense Department concluded it was best to do it over water.
National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said the same day that steps had been taken to ensure that the balloon’s instruments “softened” in their ability to spy during the flyover, while “at the same time our ability to provide intelligence and to gather information from was enlarged and improved.”
General Glen VanHerck, head of the US Northern Command, said a Navy vessel will map the debris field left behind by the balloon, which is expected to measure about 1,500 by 1,500 meters (yard) in the Atlantic Ocean.
The balloon itself was up to 200 feet (60 meters) high and carried a payload of several thousand pounds that was about the size of a regional jetliner, he said.
VanHerck said the balloon debris would be carefully studied.
“I don’t know where the debris goes for a final analysis, but I’ll tell you that the intelligence community and the law enforcement community doing this under counterintelligence will definitely look into it,” he said. .
(This story has not been edited by NewsMadura staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
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