APRIL 13, 18:26 EST
Extended U.S., China Standoff Looms
By BARRY SCHWEID
AP Diplomatic Writer
U.S. crew
AP/TSGT PAUL HOLCOMB [21K]
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
WASHINGTON (AP) — A Pentagon-led delegation will accuse China next week of aggressive and dangerous interception and tracking of American reconnaissance planes in what looms as another extended diplomatic standoff between Beijing and the United States.
In talks scheduled to open in the Chinese capital Wednesday, the Bush administration will insist the kind of reconnaissance conducted by a U.S. plane that made an emergency landing at a Chinese air base April 1 is routinely carried out by some half-dozen Asian countries, including China, a senior U.S. official said Friday.
Recent U.S. flights, however, have been intercepted by Chinese jets that maneuvered as close as three feet to surveillance aircraft, which prompted strong State Department complaints to Beijing in December and again in January, U.S. officials said.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
``I think they owe us an explanation,'' Deputy Secretary of State Richard L. Armitage said in discussing preparations for the meeting in Beijing with reporters.
A joint commission established three years ago to improve air and maritime safety convenes April 23 in San Francisco, and could become a forum for a tense airing of differences.
The plane's 24 crew members arrived Thursday in Honolulu and will fly to Whidbey Island, Wash., on Saturday to be home for Easter. White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said Friday that President Bush will not go to their homecoming ceremony. ``He does not believe that politicians need to always insert themselves into tender moments,'' Fleischer told reporters in Crawford, Texas, where Bush was spending the weekend. ``The military will know how to welcome people back. He thinks that will be fitting and appropriate and just the right amount of hoop-de-la.''
With the U.S. military crew of 21 men and 3 women back home after 11 days' detention and recounting in debriefings what happened to their crippled Navy EP-3, the Bush administration has sharpened its rhetorical thrusts at the Chinese.
In tough language as he flew home from the Balkans, Secretary of State Colin Powell said he fully expects China to return the plane, as the administration has demanded.
``I have to assume that they've been all over it, in it,'' Powell said. ``But it's our plane, and we expect it would be returned.''
On a related matter, Powell said U.S. expressions of sorrow for the loss of the Chinese pilot in the collision and for making an emergency landing on Hainan island without permission ``did not constitute an apology.''
``The Chinese are characterizing that as an apology. We should not be fooled by Chinese propaganda that says they got an apology,'' Powell said.
In Havana, where Chinese President Jiang Zemin was visiting, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhu Bangzao continued to characterize the letter from the U.S. ambassador that ended the crew's detention as an apology.
``This affair has not ended,'' Zhu said at a news conference. The key to better U.S.-Chinese relations, he said, ``lies in whether the government of the United States can adequately resolve this incident.''
At the Pentagon, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said the American reconnaissance plane was flying straight and level until it was struck by a Chinese fighter jet that was ``maneuvering aggressively'' in the skies above the South China Sea.
In his first public comments on the incident, Rumsfeld forcefully defended the U.S. crew and contradicted the Chinese version of the incident, which faulted the American plane for the crash. He insisted that surveillance flights would continue, despite Beijing's objections, but did not say when they would be resumed.
``We need to do so for the safety of our forces, and we need to do it for the interests and benefit of our friends and allies in the region,'' he said at a news conference.
``For 12 days one side of the story has been presented,'' Rumsfeld said. ``It seemed to me, with the crew safely back in the United States, it was time to set out factually what actually took place. Ultimately, the truth comes out.''
Rumsfeld suggested that China's recent pattern of flying jet fighters too close to U.S. surveillance planes led to the in-flight collision.
``It was clearly an accident,'' he said, referring to the Chinese jet clipping the Navy plane. ``You've got to know that no pilot intentionally takes his horizontal stabilizer and sticks it in the propeller of an EP-3. He did not mean to do that; I am certain of that.''
With Powell, Rumsfeld and Armitage all stepping forward to defend the American crew, insist on recovery of the plane and declare U.S. reconnaissance flights will not be stopped, the Bush administration clearly was engaged in a public relations, as well as diplomatic, initiative aimed at the American and Chinese people and governments around the world.
During the tortuous negotiations to free the crew, President Bush and other top U.S. official spoke with relative restraint. With their return, the gloves came off.
Sen. Craig Thomas, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations subcommittee on Asia, encouraged the administration to remain engaged with China but predicted members of Congress who backed normal trade arrangements may oppose extending them now.
What could make the difference, the Wyoming Republican said in an interview, is how the Chinese respond to U.S. demands to return the aircraft and U.S. insistence on continued surveillance flight.
``Engagement is the best way for success for both of our countries,'' Thomas said by telephone from his home.
Larry Wortzel, of the Heritage Foundation, a private research group, foresaw slow negotiations and that ``the Chinese are not going to be real nice about this.''
As a U.S. protest against the Tiananmen Square crackdown in June 1989, the first Bush administration refused to return 50 Chinese F-8 fighters that were to have been equipped with radar to strengthen China's defense against the Soviet Union, Wortzel recalled in an interview.
It took five years before the Chinese got their planes, and they were returned in crates. ``We also charged China five years of storage fees and shipping costs,'' Wortzel said.
