“We are not looking for a new cold war,” Biden said.
Biden, in his broader remarks about the Chinese balloon and three unidentified objects shot down by US fighters, did not say when he would speak to Xi, but said the US continues to engage diplomatically with China on the issue.
“I expect to talk to President Xi, I hope we get to the bottom of it, but I make no apologies for shooting down that balloon,” Biden said in response to Beijing’s complaints.
After the speech, he told NBC News, “I think the last thing Xi wants is to radically break ties with the United States and me.”
China says the 200-foot (60-meter) balloon was to monitor weather conditions, but Washington says it was clearly a surveillance balloon with a huge undercarriage containing electronics.
Biden, who had made few public comments about the wave of aerial objects that began with the sighting of the Chinese balloon, broke his silence after lawmakers asked for more information about the incidents, which have puzzled many Americans.
He said the US intelligence community is still trying to learn more about the three unidentified objects: one that was shot down over Alaska, one over Canada and a third that crashed into Lake Huron. The administration said they were shot down because they posed a threat to civil aviation.
“We still don’t know exactly what these three objects were, but nothing at this time suggests they were related to China’s ballooning program or that they were any other country’s surveillance vehicles,” Biden said.
The intelligence community believes the objects were “most likely balloons related to private companies, recreational or research institutions,” Biden said.
Biden said they may have been spotted due to enhanced radar response to the Chinese balloon.
“That’s why I’ve directed my team to come back to me with more precise rules on how we will deal with these unidentified objects moving forward, distinguishing between those that may pose safety and security risks that require action and those that don’t.” they do,” he said.
Biden said the results of the administration’s review of how to deal with unidentified objects in the future will be classified and shared with concerned members of Congress. “These parameters will remain confidential so as not to give a road map to our enemies to try and evade our defenses,” she said.
Biden’s remarks followed reports that the Chinese balloon, which was shot down Feb. 4 after crossing the continental United States, originally had a trajectory that would have taken it over Guam and Hawaii, but was blown off course by prevailing winds.
The incident prompted the US Secretary of State Antony Blinken to postpone a planned February visit to Beijing, where both sides had been trying to stabilize already strained relations.
Blinken’s scheduled attendance at the Munich Security Conference this weekend has raised speculation that he may be meeting top Chinese diplomat Wang Yi there.
THE Washington Post U.S. military and intelligence agencies have been tracking the balloon since it took off from China’s southern island province of Hainan, said Tuesday.
It was shot down off the coast of South Carolina. American lawmakers criticized the administration for letting it roam across the country for the first time, including near sensitive military bases.
When asked in advance about Biden’s remarks, a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman on Thursday again called the downed balloon an “unmanned civilian airship” and said its flight into US airspace was an “isolated” incident.
The United States “should be willing to meet China in the middle, handle differences, and properly handle isolated and unexpected incidents to avoid misunderstanding and misjudgment; and promote the return of US-China relations to a healthy and stable development path,” the spokesman said. Wang Wenbin he told reporters during a regular briefing.
Beijing had criticized Washington for overreacting by shooting down the balloon and warned of “countermeasures against relevant US entities that undermine China’s sovereignty and security.”
On Thursday, China put Lockheed Martin Corp and a unit of Raytheon Technologies Corp on an “unreliable entity list” on arms sales to Taiwan, banning them from imports and exports linked to China in its latest sanctions against US companies. Lockheed makes the F-22 Raptor fighter jet that flew the mission to shoot down the Chinese balloon and Raytheon makes the AIM-9X Sidewinder missile that blew it out of the sky.
