FILE PHOTO: Antony Blinken speaks during his confirmation hearing to be Secretary of State before the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee at the Capitol in Washington, January 19, 2021. Alex Edelman/Pool via REUTERS/File Photo
Secretary of State Antony Blinken warned China’s top diplomat on Saturday that the U.S. will not tolerate violations of its airspace after a Chinese spy balloon flew over North America, but received no apologies from Beijing.
Blinken met with Wang Yi, director of China’s Office of the Central Commission for Foreign Affairs, on the sidelines of the Munich Security Conference. It was the administration’s first face-to-face reckoning with the Chinese government since the balloon was discovered earlier this month and subsequently downed by the U.S. military off the coast of South Carolina.
According to a State Department readout of the meeting, Blinken “directly spoke to the unacceptable violation of U.S. sovereignty and international law” by the Chinese balloon “underscoring that this irresponsible act must never again occur.” Blinken later told NBC’s Chuck Todd in an interview after the meeting that Wang offered “no apology” for the incident.
We are very concerned that China is considering providing lethal support to Russia in its aggression against Ukraine and I made clear that that would have serious consequences in our relationship,” Blinken said in the NBC interview.
Blinken also warned Beijing about “implications and consequences if China provides material support to Russia or assistance with systemic sanctions evasion,” as Moscow wages war against Ukraine.
Wang slammed the Biden administration’s destruction of the balloon and urged the U.S. to “change course, acknowledge and repair the damage that its excessive use of force caused to China-U.S. relations,” according to a statement published by Chinese state media.
The statement described the controversy as the “so-called airship incident” in an apparent effort to belittle the U.S. reaction that has included a widening bipartisan uproar about what both a House and a Senate resolution have declared was a “brazen violation” of U.S. sovereignty.
Those readouts suggest that neither side is ready to take steps to move beyond the spy balloon incident in order to steer bilateral ties toward a less-rancorous setting.
”READ FULL ARTICLE: https://www.politico.com/news/2023/02/17/negotiations-blinken-chinese-munich-00083545
About Author
