Beijing : China warned the US against conducting “dangerous” overflight by surveillance aircraft as it claimed to have driven away an American spy plane with radio warnings while the plane was snooping over artificial islands Beijing is building in the disputed South China Sea.
The foreign ministry condemned the overflight as “highly irresponsible and dangerous”, warning that such actions by the US could cause “untoward incidents”. “The reconnaissance plane flew close to China’s Nansha islands on May 20 to carry out surveillance Operations and China’s garrison troops drove it away by radio communication in accordance with the relevant regulations,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei told media briefing here.
The P-8 Poseidon plane, the US military’s most advanced surveillance aircraft, with CNN television crew on board flew over Spratly archipelago called by China as Nansha islands when it received several warnings from the Chinese military to retreat.
The incident filmed by the US network including the warning issued by Chinese navy asking the plane to leave, came in the backdrop of China’s assertions that its claims over the SCS has not affected the freedom of navigation in the region insisted by India and several other countries.
K J M Varma
