US Seeks to Deflate Chinese Balloon Worries

FILED - 04 February 2023, US, Myrtle Beach: Chinese spy balloon is pictured shortly before it was shot down by an F22 military fighter jet over Surfside Beach in South Carolina. Photo: Joe Granita/ZUMA Press Wire/dpa
FILED - 04 February 2023, US, Myrtle Beach: Chinese spy balloon is pictured shortly before it was shot down by an F22 military fighter jet over Surfside Beach in South Carolina. Photo: Joe Granita/ZUMA Press Wire/dpa
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US Seeks to Deflate Chinese Balloon Worries

FILED - 04 February 2023, US, Myrtle Beach: Chinese spy balloon is pictured shortly before it was shot down by an F22 military fighter jet over Surfside Beach in South Carolina. Photo: Joe Granita/ZUMA Press Wire/dpa
FILED - 04 February 2023, US, Myrtle Beach: Chinese spy balloon is pictured shortly before it was shot down by an F22 military fighter jet over Surfside Beach in South Carolina. Photo: Joe Granita/ZUMA Press Wire/dpa

The White House sought Tuesday to take the air out of an escalating diplomatic crisis with Beijing, saying that preliminary evidence suggests three unidentified aerial objects shot down by US jets were not involved in a broader Chinese spy balloon program.

The United States has been in a state of alarm since a huge white balloon from China was spotted tracking over a series of top secret nuclear weapons sites, before being shot down just off the east coast on February 4, said AFP.

In the wake of the incident, the US military adjusted radar settings to detect smaller objects and promptly discovered three more unidentified craft that President Joe Biden ordered shot down -- one over Alaska, another over Canada and the third over Lake Huron off Michigan.

US authorities "haven't seen any indication or anything that points specifically to the idea that these three objects were part of (China's) spy balloon program or that they were definitely involved in external intelligence," National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said.

With Congress, the media and the public speculating over everything from a coordinated Chinese spying offensive to aliens, officials are now stressing that the three new objects appear to be neither Chinese nor involved in spying.

Kirby said they "could be balloons that were simply tied to commercial or research entities and therefore benign."

That "could emerge as a leading explanation here," he said.

White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre acknowledged that the ownership of the three objects remains unknown but "we do want to make sure that the Americans, American people, understand that there's no need to panic."

Beijing denies it uses spy balloons and says the huge craft shot down off the coast February 4 was for weather research, while another spotted over South America was for pilot training.

On Monday, Chinese authorities upped the ante by accusing Washington of sending its own spy balloons over their territory -- something US officials deny.

The spat has already inflicted diplomatic damage between the rival superpowers, with Secretary of State Antony Blinken abruptly canceling a rare visit to Beijing.

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Kirby stressed that China is running a "well funded, deliberate program" to use high-altitude, hard-to-detect balloons for spying on the United States and other countries.

But whether the three latest objects downed were part of that will not be definitively known until the debris is analyzed -- and that is taking more time than US authorities would like.

"It will certainly help us hone in on that if and when we can get the debris," Kirby said.

But due to "pretty tough" weather and geographical conditions in all three cases, "we're recognizing that it could be some time before we locate and recover the debris," Kirby said. "We haven't found them yet."

The next question will be how to calibrate the military's radar shield.

If the three destroyed objects turn out to have been private or otherwise non-hostile aircraft, then the Pentagon will have to decide whether it should be responding so aggressively after every sighting.

An inter-agency security review is underway, Kirby said, and in the meantime there's no reason to expect a similar rate of drama. "I never said there was some sort of blanket policy, that we're just going to shoot things out of the sky."

Asked if Biden had overreacted and should be embarrassed if the three objects shot down turn out to be something innocuous, like weather study balloons, Jean-Pierre said: "I don't think the president should be embarrassed by the fact that he took action to make sure that our airspace, civilian airspace, was safe."



Maldives Ban Israelis to Protest Gaza War 

The Maldives had lifted a previous ban on Israeli tourists in the early 1990s and briefly moved to restore relations in 2010. (Getty Images/AFP)
The Maldives had lifted a previous ban on Israeli tourists in the early 1990s and briefly moved to restore relations in 2010. (Getty Images/AFP)
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Maldives Ban Israelis to Protest Gaza War 

The Maldives had lifted a previous ban on Israeli tourists in the early 1990s and briefly moved to restore relations in 2010. (Getty Images/AFP)
The Maldives had lifted a previous ban on Israeli tourists in the early 1990s and briefly moved to restore relations in 2010. (Getty Images/AFP)

The Maldives announced Tuesday it was banning the entry of Israelis from the luxury tourist archipelago in "resolute solidarity" with the Palestinian people.

President Mohamed Muizzu ratified the legislation shortly after it was approved by parliament on Tuesday.

"The ratification reflects the government's firm stance in response to the continuing atrocities and ongoing acts of genocide committed by Israel against the Palestinian people," his office said in a statement.

"The Maldives reaffirms its resolute solidarity with the Palestinian cause."

The ban will be implemented with immediate effect, a spokesman for Muizzu's office told AFP.

The Maldives, a small Islamic republic of 1,192 strategically located coral islets, is known for its secluded white sandy beaches, shallow turquoise lagoons and Robinson Crusoe-style getaways.

Official data showed that only 59 Israeli tourists visited the archipelago in February, among 214,000 other foreign arrivals.

The Maldives had lifted a previous ban on Israeli tourists in the early 1990s and briefly moved to restore relations in 2010.

Opposition parties and government allies in the Maldives have been pressuring Muizzu to ban Israelis as a statement of opposition to the Gaza war.

Israel's Ministry of Foreign Affairs urged its citizens last year to avoid travelling to the Maldives.

The Gaza war broke out after Palestinian group Hamas' October 2023 attack on Israel, which resulted in the deaths of 1,218 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli figures.

Gaza's health ministry said on Sunday that at least 1,613 Palestinians had been killed since March 18, when a ceasefire collapsed, taking the overall death toll since the war began to 50,983.