The Government of China regretted the incident recorded last week when a “civilian” balloon for “scientific” purposes flew over the airspace of Costa Rica, the Costa Rican Foreign Ministry reported last Monday, February 6th, 2023.
“The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of China, through its Embassy in San José, regretted the recorded incident”, indicates a statement from the Costa Rican Foreign Ministry. The text adds that the Chinese Embassy “reiterated that the balloon that was observed from various parts of the national territory was of a civil nature and had scientific purposes, mainly meteorological” and also assured that “the object did not represent any threat to any country”.
The Chinese government’s explanations add that the balloon’s presence in Costa Rican airspace “was due to a deviation from the scheduled route due to weather conditions and limited self-direction capacity.” The Foreign Ministry reported that it took note of the explanations and emphasized that it is a priority of the Costa Rican government “to maintain its mission of safeguarding national sovereignty, demanding unrestricted respect for international law, sovereignty and territorial integrity from the international community”.
The balloon was observed in various parts of Costa Rica on February 2nd, without the authorities having information about the origin of the device that day. The Chinese government affirmed this past Monday in Beijing that the Latin American countries through which the second Chinese aircraft detected by the US Pentagon flew over “understand” that it does not “represent any threat”. The countries over which the passage of the aircraft has been detected are Costa Rica, Colombia and Venezuela, according to different sources.
