US President Joe Biden denied, Thursday, that the United States has confirmation that the three objects that were shot down in North American airspace are linked to the Chinese spy balloon program, and are likely to be from private entities that are not supported by governments, according to the network. CNN USA.
“We don’t yet know exactly what these three objects are, but there is now no indication that they are linked to the Chinese spy balloon program, or that they were surveillance vehicles from any other country,” Biden said from the White House.
He added: “The intelligence community’s current assessment is that these three objects were most likely balloons associated with private companies, entertainment or research institutions that study weather or conduct other scientific research.”
According to “CNN”, these comments are the president’s first official statements about the objects that were captured from the sky, last weekend, over Canada and the United States.
Officials were wary of the president speaking publicly about the Chinese balloon until more information was gathered about the three UFOs that were shot down last weekend, according to CNN.
The US president said he plans to talk to his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping, about the issue, while keeping allies and Congress informed of any developments.
Biden stressed that he will seek to discover the truth about these objects and how to deal with them in the future, saying: “I hope that we will get to the bottom of the matter, but I do not apologize for lowering this balloon.”
And Biden warned that, “While there is no evidence to indicate that these objects may cause a danger, anything that poses a threat to the safety and security of the American people, I will take it down immediately.”
And the president talked about his plan to deal with such matters in the future, and said that he had instructed his team to set “more clear rules for how to deal in the future with such unidentified objects, with the need to distinguish between those that are likely to pose a threat to safety and security and require action and those that You don’t need that.”
“These confidential standards will be shared with Congress when they are completed,” he added.
And the US President added that he directed the National Security Adviser, Jake Sullivan, to lead this mission and develop the government’s plan on how to deal in the future with similar high-altitude objects.
This week is expected to see the issuance of new protocols on how the United States should deal with similar unidentified objects in the future.
Federal officials said a Chinese surveillance balloon, believed to be collecting intelligence, that crashed off the coast of South Carolina earlier this month was about the size of three buses. By comparison, the size of later objects, which were not attributed to a specific country or entity, is believed to be much smaller.
A number of Republicans in Congress criticized Biden for not ordering the army to drop the first balloon quickly enough, leaving it sailing east for days. They also invited him to speak on the matter, but administration officials said the delay was caused by concerns about escalating military tensions with China. They also told lawmakers that the balloon was not shot down the first time it entered Alaska airspace because the waters there are cold and deep, making it less likely that they will be able to retrieve the balloon.
In a speech Thursday, Biden justified the decision to delay the downing of the Chinese balloon, saying he had given the green light to the US military to remove it “as soon as it is safe to do so.” He added, “The army advised not to shoot it above the ground because its huge size poses a threat to civilians living in the area.”
“Instead we followed him closely, analyzed his capabilities and learned more about how he works, because we knew his trajectory.”
Biden emphasized that dropping the balloon sent “a clear message that violating our sovereignty is unacceptable. We will work to protect our country and we have done so.”
On February 13, China accused the United States of being behind the “illegal” flight of more than 10 high-altitude balloons in its airspace since January 2022.
“It is common for US balloons to illegally enter the airspace of other countries,” said Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin, at a press conference on Monday.
This accusation, made by Beijing without evidence, comes less than a day after China announced that it was preparing to shoot down an unidentified object that was flying near its eastern coast.
These Chinese allegations came after the United States and Canada monitored unidentified objects in the airspace of the two countries over the past days.