US President Joe Biden, under fire from some politicians, has said he did not view a Chinese surveillance balloon that transited the United States before it was shot down in the Atlantic Ocean to have been a major security breach.
Mr Biden, who has sought to maintain communications with China and not allow tensions with Beijing to get out of control, said in a Noticias Telemundo interview that he did not regret shooting down the balloon sooner.
"It's not a major breach," Mr Biden said. "I mean, look, it's totally … it's a violation of international law. It's our airspace. And once it comes into our space, we can do what we want with it."
He said US military officials were worried that by shooting it down over land, the balloon and its parts could drop into a populated area.
"This thing was gigantic. What happened if it came down and hit a school in a rural area? What happened if it came down? So I told them as soon as they could shoot it down, shoot it down. They made a wise decision. They shot it down over water, they're recovering most of the parts, and they're good," he said.
Mr Biden on 2 February ordered the balloon shot down once it crossed into the northwestern United States, but acquiesced to the US military's request to not act until it was over water.
The 200-foot-tall balloon, along with its undercarriage of electronic gadgetry, was shot down by a US fighter jet off the coast of South Carolina on 4 February.
The US military has been recovering as many parts as possible.
Some Republicans and Democrats have complained that Mr Biden should have had the balloon downed sooner.
The high-altitude balloon was first detected over Alaska on 28 January.
US House condemns Chinese balloon
US politicians yesterday unanimously denounced China's use of the balloon.
The vote allowed lawmakers to agree on a bipartisan stance on Beijing, after several balloon-related political skirmishes.
The House of Representatives passed a resolution "condemning the Chinese Communist Party's use of a high-altitude surveillance balloon over United States territory as a brazen violation of United States sovereignty."
Republicans heavily criticised President Joe Biden's response to the incursion, accusing his administration of being weak in the face of Chinese aggression.
For congressman Michael McCaul, the resolution's sponsor, the balloon affair offered a silver lining: "The good news is it galvanised the American people's opposition to Chairman Xi (Jinping)'s communist regime," he said.
A Pentagon official told a separate Senate hearing that the United States is still trying to figure out what exactly the balloon, which it says was deployed for espionage purposes, was looking for.
"We have some very good guesses about that," assistant defense secretary Jedidiah Royal said.
"We are learning more as we exploit the contents" of the balloon, he added.
Beijing has insisted the balloon was a "civilian airship used for research, mainly meteorological purposes."
