UAE Paper Slams US Handling of Spy Plane Crisis

"Al-Ittihad," an official newspaper of the United Arab Emirates (UAE), carried an editorial Tuesday criticizing the United States for its position after its spy plane bumped into and destroyed a Chinese military jet.

The editorial expressed "great shock" at the fact that Washington offered no prompt apology to China, instead it demands that its aircraft not be boarded and be returned immediately because it is US sovereign territory.

"What kind of sovereignty is this?" the paper asked.

The move was meant to send a clear signal that Washington would react strongly if China, in accordance with international law and the norms governing international relations and the principle of safeguarding its sovereignty, takes any actions about the US spy plane, the paper added.

The paper stressed that China is fully justified in exercising its sovereignty to intercept the intruding aircraft and demanding that the United States bear the full responsibility of the incident, which Washington has tried to brush away as "incidental. "

Worried about a stronger China, which Washington views as a ' rival,' the United States has habitually sent surveillance planes equipped with sophisticated spying devices to airspace around the Taiwan Straits to gather more intelligence about China, the paper said.

The paper compared the spy plane crisis to a new chapter in an endless novel entitled "Infiltration, Hegemony, Provocation and the Unparalleled Policy of the World Police."






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