US Vice President Joseph Biden plans to speak with President Xi Jinping about a Chinese spy balloon shot down over US soil this month.
Biden stated, "We are not looking for a new cold war."
In his most comprehensive remarks about the Chinese balloon and three unidentified objects shot down by US jets, Biden did not indicate when he would speak with Xi. Still, he did stress that the United States was continuing to engage China diplomatically on the matter.
In response to Beijing's concerns, Biden stated, "I expect to be speaking with President Xi, I hope we are going to get to the bottom of this, but I make no apologies for taking down that balloon."
China claims that the 60-meter balloon was used to monitor meteorological conditions, while Washington, DC, asserts that it was a surveillance balloon with a large undercarriage carrying electronic components.
Biden, who had made few public comments regarding the rash of sightings of unidentified flying objects that began with the discovery of the Chinese balloon, broke his quiet when senators demanded more information on the instances that have left many Americans baffled.
He stated that the US intelligence community was still attempting to discover more about the three unidentified objects, one of which was shot down over Alaska, another over Canada, and the third crashed into Lake Huron. According to the administration, they were shot down because they presented a threat to civil aviation.
Biden stated, "We don't yet know exactly what these three objects were, but nothing now suggests they were related to the Chinese spy balloon program or surveillance vehicles from any other country."
He stated that the intelligence community assessed the items as "most likely balloons tied to private companies, recreation or research institutions" and that they may have been detected due to the increased radar in response to the Chinese balloon.
"That's why I've directed my team to come back to me with sharper rules for how we will deal with these unidentified objects moving forward, distinguishing between those likely to pose safety and security risks that necessitate action and those that do not."
The comments were made in the wake of reports that the Chinese balloon, which crashed on 4 February after crossing the mainland United States, was originally on a trajectory that would have brought it across Guam and Hawaii but was detoured by prevailing winds.
The event forced US Secretary of State Antony Blinken to postpone a trip to Beijing, where both sides had hoped to improve their already tense relations.
This weekend, Blinken is set to attend the Munich Security Conference, which has sparked rumours that he may meet China's top diplomat Wang Yi.
John Bolton, a national security advisor during the Trump administration, tweeted on Wednesday that the US intelligence community had briefed him and that he remained "profoundly troubled about the Biden Administration's handling of these potential national-security threats" by the Biden administration's handling of potential national-security threats, citing its "changing storyline."
The Washington Post claimed on Tuesday that US military and intelligence agencies tracked the balloon from the moment it took off from the Chinese province of Hainan in the country's south.
It was shot down off the coast of South Carolina, and politicians in the United States have criticized the administration for allowing it to drift across the country, especially near vital military posts.
Informed in advance about Biden's statements, a spokesman for China's foreign ministry on Thursday referred to the downed balloon as an "unmanned civilian airship". He stated that its flight into US territory was "isolated."
The US "should be willing to meet China in the middle, manage differences and appropriately handle isolated, unexpected incidents to avoid misunderstandings and misjudgments; and promote the return of US-China relations to a healthy and stable development track," spokesperson Wang Wenbin told reporters at a regular briefing.
Beijing had accused Washington of overreacting by shooting down the balloon and had threatened "countermeasures against relevant US entities that undermine China's sovereignty and security."
China placed Lockheed Martin Corp. and a unit of Raytheon Technologies Inc. on an "unreliable entities list" on Thursday, prohibiting them from imports and exports related to China in its latest round of sanctions against US corporations.
