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The two sides are crafting a letter that would set out a formula for the crew's return and open an inquiry into the accident's cause.
Compiled from Times wires
© St. Petersburg Times, published April 7, 2001
BEIJING -- U.S. diplomats met again with the crew of a U.S. Navy surveillance plane detained in China as Washington and Beijing worked Friday on an agreement to release the Americans and investigate the cause of the collision between the U.S. aircraft and a Chinese jet fighter.
Diplomatic efforts appeared close to achieving a breakthrough in the most serious dispute between the United States and China since the errant U.S. bombing of the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade during the 1999 NATO bombing campaign against Yugoslavia.
Sen. John Warner, R-Va., chairman of the Armed Services Committee, said the United States and China were crafting a letter that would lay out a formula for the return of the crew and their aircraft.
Warner said the letter would not express the apology for the collision that Chinese President Jiang Zemin has demanded. But it would reiterate the Bush administration's expression of regret for the loss of the Chinese pilot, Warner said.
Speaking to reporters after a briefing for senators by State Department, Defense and CIA officials, Warner said the two sides were discussing setting up a meeting between experts to establish how the collision occurred.
President Bush said Friday: "We're working hard to bring them home through intense negotiations with the Chinese government, and we think we're making progress."
Secretary of State Colin Powell also said he was encouraged. "We are exchanging rather precise ideas as to how to bring this to a conclusion," he said.
Powell quoted the diplomats who visited the crew as saying that they were in good health and high spirits and had not experienced any "physical or verbal mistreatment." Chinese officials did not sit in on the meeting, and they agreed to allow the U.S. diplomats to see the crew regularly, Powell said.
A photograph of 11 of the 24 crew members, taken during their first meeting with U.S. diplomats on Tuesday, was distributed by the Pentagon to family members "so they could see their loved ones," State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said. The photograph showed the 11 sitting at a table, looking forward with little expression.
Powell said the crew members were being kept in officers' quarters at a military base on Hainan Island. They made an emergency landing there Sunday in their damaged EP-3E Aries II eavesdropping plane after colliding with a Chinese F-8 fighter.
The Chinese aircraft crashed into the South China Sea, and its pilot is missing and presumed dead.
The Chinese government is demanding that the EP-3E's pilot accept responsibility for the collision. It contends he suddenly veered into one of two F-8s dispatched to shadow the U.S. plane as it cruised in international airspace off China's southern coast.
China says the U.S. pilot then violated international and Chinese law by making an unauthorized landing at a military airfield.
The United States blames the collision on the Chinese pilot, Wang Wei, saying that he had been flying recklessly close to U.S. surveillance flights for months, prompting official U.S. protests. Sen. Pat Roberts, R-Kan., a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said Wang had flown dangerously close to U.S. planes, once holding up his e-mail address for an American pilot to see.
U.S. officials also argue that under international regulations the burden was on Wang, as the intercepting pilot, to ensure there was a safe distance between his nimble, high-speed jet and the lumbering, propeller-driven EP-3E.
The United States says that the EP-3E broadcast a Mayday international distress call, which absolved the pilot of his obligation to obtain Chinese permission to land. U.S. officials contend the plane is sovereign U.S. territory that cannot be boarded or inspected without permission.
U.S. officials complain that Chinese experts have been aboard the aircraft, analyzing its top-secret equipment. But they believe that the crew was able to destroy the most sensitive data, equipment and computer software before landing.
Zhang Yebai, a U.S. expert at the Academy of Social Sciences, a think tank in Beijing, said it would be difficult for either president to back away from his position. One possible solution would be a limited apology by Bush, perhaps for the U.S. crew's alleged failure to request permission to land at the Chinese airport.
China's state-run Xinhua News Agency on Friday carried a letter to Bush from Wang's wife, Ruan Guoqin.
"I am an ordinary Chinese woman writing you this letter in tears on my sickbed," she wrote.
Ruan, who said she had been hospitalized after hearing of her husband's loss, excoriated Bush. "What is incredible is your and your government's apathetic attitude toward my husband's life. My husband, as a Chinese serviceman, was carrying out his bounden duty. You are too cowardly to voice an "apology' and have been trying to shirk your responsibility repeatedly and defame my husband groundlessly."
Xinhua also reported on the surviving F-8 pilot's account of the collision.
The pilot, Zhao Yu, told the Xinhua News Agency that he and Wang were on a "tracking mission" southeast of Hainan when they saw the EP-3E shortly before 9 a.m.
Zhao's account left unclear the precise positions of the two fighters relative to the U.S. plane.
"It's barbaric of the U.S. plane to ram and ruin our jet right at our doorstep," Zhao said.
Zhao said that at 9:07 a.m., the EP-3E abruptly veered toward Wang's plane. He said the nose and left wing of the surveillance aircraft bumped Wang's jet, and a propeller on the EP-3E's left wing smashed the fighter's vertical tail wing into pieces.
"Watch out!" Zhao said he shouted to Wang. "Your vertical tail has been knocked off."
Zhao, identified as a commander in China's navy, said Wang responded, "I see."
About 30 seconds later, Zhao said, he saw Wang's jet roll out of control and then plunge toward the sea. "Wang requested to parachute and I said "Okay,' " Zhao said. "Then I lost radio contact with him."
Philip Drew, a retired U.S. Air Force brigadier general, disputed Zhao's account. "No way the P-3 does anything abruptly," he said. "It's a lumbering, cumbersome aircraft that can't do anything quickly."
Drew also said that if one of the EP-3E's propellers had hit the F-8's vertical tail wing, there would be far more damage to the U.S. aircraft.
The EP-3E landed with two inoperable engines. Its nose cone was missing and its wing flaps could not move, U.S. officials said.