Russia and China flay Pentagon's spy operation

Dubai: A US satellite kill over the Pacific Ocean on Thursday has triggered a diplomatic storm with China and Russia.

Beijing has asked Washington to release data on the shooting down of the spy satellite while Moscow warned against moving arms race into space.

They consider the mission a "false flag operation" to further US space weapons programme.

"China requests the US to fulfil its international obligations in real earnest and provide necessary information and data in a timely and prompt way so that the relevant countries can take precautions," Foreign Ministry spokesman Liu Jianchao said in Beijing.

He said China was closely following "the possible harm caused by the US action to outer space and relevant countries", the official Peoples Daily Online reported.

Moscow said the test was a veiled plan of the US to test a space weapon. Al Jazeera television channel quoted Russia's defence ministry as saying the country feared the US plan represented an "attempt to move the arms race into space".

"The decision to destroy the American satellite does not look harmless as they try to claim, especially at a time when the US has been evading negotiations on the limitation of an arms race in outer space."

Failure
Orbiter went 'deaf'

The US reconnaissance satellite US193 that also bears the name L21 was launched aboard a Delta rocket in December 2006.

But ground stations lost control of the orbiter soon after the launch. Experts say the satellite is not necessarily dead, but may have only gone deaf. Some vital failure in the satellite could have made it impossible to control it.

Pentagon claims the 2,250kg satellite was threatening to hit the earth before it was knocked out 260km above ground.