AP, TOKYO
China's anti-satellite weapons test raised concerns in Asia and the US yesterday about the rising militarization of space and prompted governments to demand explanations from Beijing.
The US said China conducted the test earlier this month in which an old Chinese weather satellite was destroyed by a missile.
Analysts said China's weather satellites would travel at about the same altitude as US spy satellites, so the test represented an indirect threat to US defense systems.
Officials in Japan and Australia immediately demanded China explain its actions.
Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer, who was in New York, said Sydney opposed the test and had called upon Beijing's ambassador to Australia, Madame Fu Ying, for an explanation.
"Our concern about this is that to have a capacity to shoot down satellites in outer space is not consistent with ... the traditional Chinese position of opposition to the militarization of outer space," he told reporters.
"So we've asked the Chinese for an explanation as to what this may mean," Downer said, adding that so far Chinese officials, including the ambassador in Canberra, said they are not aware of the incident.
The US Department of Defense would not comment on the test, but other US officials said it raised serious concerns in Washington.
"The US believes China's development and testing of such weapons is inconsistent with the spirit of cooperation that both countries aspire to in the civil space area," National Security Council spokesman Gordon Johndroe said Thursday. "We and other countries have expressed our concern to the Chinese."
Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said Tokyo has asked Beijing for an explanation and stressed the importance of the peaceful use of space.
"We must use space peacefully," he said. "We are asking the Chinese government about the test."
Japanese Foreign Minister Taro Aso criticized Beijing for failing to give advance notice to Tokyo.
"We told China that we doubt if we could call this a peaceful use," Aso said at a press conference.
Yasuhisa Shiozaki, Japan's top government spokesman, suggested that China's lack of transparency over its military development could trigger suspicions about its motives in the region.
Meanwhile, China said yesterday that other nations had no reason to feel threatened by its space program amid reports that it had shot down a satellite for the first time.
"There's no need to feel threatened about this," Foreign Ministry spokesman Liu Jianchao told journalists, but he declined to confirm that China had downed one of its own satellites.
"So far we have not got any confirmed information about this."
He added that China had no intention of triggering an arms race in space.
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