Wednesday, April 4, 2001

By Sandra Jontz, Washington bureau

WASHINGTON — After repeated delays, U.S. officials met Tuesday with the two dozen crewmembers of the U.S. Navy spy plane forced to make an emergency landing on a resort Chinese island Sunday after a mid-air collision with a Chinese fighter jet.

Secretary of State Colin Powell confirmed Tuesday that counselor and attaché officials gathered shortly after midnight China time with downed crewmembers, but did not have a status report.

News organizations reported Tuesday that the officials meeting with the crew said that the members being held are safe and in good health, and that the Chinese government was not going to release the members any time soon.

Despite the crew being held against their will, Pentagon officials have not labelled the crew as hostages or captives.

"I’m not at all clear why the delay ... and the terms are ambiguous at this time," said Pentagon spokesman Rear Adm. Craig Quigley.

The meeting, however, was a step closer to possible resolution, Powell said.

"I hope this is the beginning of the end of this incident," Powell said during a press conference in Florida. "I hope this will lead to a rapid release of all members of the crew back to the United States ... and I also hope this will lead to a rapid release of the plane."

But it took too much time for Chinese officials to allow such a meeting, Powell said.

"It should not have taken this long to happen, but now that it has happened, I hope it leads us to a full resolution to this matter," Powell said.

Powell said he could not confirm several reports that Chinese officials boarded the U.S. Navy EP-3 shortly after the emergency landing on the southern island of Hainan and began taking equipment.

"I won’t hypothesize about the consequences of such a violation," Powell said. "We have said the plane should not be violated, that it is protected, in our judgment, of that type of violation."

The Pentagon has taken a backseat in the incident, saying this is a diplomatic situation instead of a military one, Quigley said.

Chinese officials have clamored for a U.S. apology for the collision, but U.S. Ambassador to China, Joseph Prueher, said Tuesday no such apology would be issued.

Since the plane was grounded Sunday, Defense attaché Brig. Gen. Neal Sealock, Naval attaché Capt. Brad Kaplan and Ted Gong, counsel from the consulate general in Guagzhou, have been on Hainan negotiating with Chinese officials in Beijing to meet with the crewmembers.

The pilot landed the damaged plane on a Chinese airfield within 15 to 20 minutes of putting out a mayday call on an open radio frequency monitored by several countries, Quigley said.

He did not know whether the crew had ample time to destroy sensitive information. The military prioritizes its information and has a set procedure for destroying it in such situations. The procedure is practiced routinely, Quigley said.

U.S. military personnel last communicated with the crew minutes after landing the plane and said only that the crew was uninjured, Quigley said. He did not know why communications ceased.

The EP-3E ARIES II, or Airborne Reconnaissance Integrated Electronic System II, is a large, slow-moving aircraft equipped with latest technological spy equipment.

Experts have said it is unlikely the U.S. plane was at fault in the collision because it moves too slowly. A more plausible scenario is that the agile Chinese fighter plane collided with the EP-3, they said.

Quigley scolded the press corps for referring to it as a spy plane, saying the aircraft was on an "overt, routine surveillance and reconnaissance" mission carried out all over the world.

The Navy has 11 such aircraft, based on the Orion P-3 airframe, that are equipped with sensitive receivers and high-gain dish antennae that pick up a wide range of electronic emissions.

The $36 million planes were used extensively during conflicts in Bosnia and Iraq.

Despite increasing tension between the U.S. and Chinese governments, the two powers are far from entering a Cold-War relationship like that the United States shared with the former Soviet Union, said Gerrit Gong, Asia director at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C.

"We’re watching this from several different angles, but our objective must be clear, and that is to get our people back and our airplane back," Gong said. "We need to focus on that task and keep the overall situation in perspective and not blow it out of proportion, on either side.

"This is not the beginning of a Cold War."

Neither will the United States and China go to war any time soon, Gong predicted, especially since Tuesday’s withdrawal of three U.S. Navy destroyers that had been ordered the day before to remain in the Sea of China.

The Navy released the USS Higgins, the USS Hewitt and the USS Fitzgerald from the region. The ships are now headed to Guam for a scheduled refueling, said Lt. Col. Stephen Barger, a Navy spokesman with Pacific Command in Hawaii.

Adm. Dennis C. Blair, commander in chief of the U.S. Pacific Command, decided Monday to hold the ships in the region in case the Chinese government wanted to use the vessels for search-and-rescue mission for the missing Chinese pilot, Quigley said.

When the Chinese declined the help, the ships were released.

Gong had a different take on the ships’ presence.

"We wanted it to be clear that we have an interest, but also make it clear we are not trying to provoke anything," Gong said of the ship retreat. "It’s unlikely we’ll get into a military confrontation because there are other ways this problem can be solved."

Over the past few years, China aggressively has been challenging the U.S. military’s open spying by flying closer to U.S. planes, Gong said.

Some members of Congress already are suggesting that as long as the EP-3 crew are held by the Chinese, the Bush administration should take immediate punitive action against Beijing.

Sen. Bob Smith, R-N.H., a member of the Armed Services Committee, said he will recommend to the White House that Bush "immediately suspend ongoing military exchanges between the U.S. and China, until the P-3 flight members are returned to American soil and Bush administration has concluded its review of the overall merits of the military-to-military exchange program."

The Pentagon has a long-standing history of limited intermilitary exchanges with the Chinese Ministry of Defense, like visits to each other’s bases or short-term visits by small groups of officers to each other’s war colleges.

In March, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld discussed the military-to-military exchange program with Qian Qichen, China’s vice premier and foreign minister, and for "transparency and reciprocity" for the program, Quigley said.

Quigley said he was not aware of any examples that would demonstrate that the current sharing between the two militaries has not been equal. Rumsfeld’s comments to Qian "reflects more of [his] thinking on the way ahead with this program," Quigley said during a March 22 press briefing.

Both countries need to maintain constructive relations, Gong said. "They are two of the largest economic forces in the world," he said.

The Chinese government’s search-and-rescue operations for the missing fighter pilot continued Tuesday, according to official information posted on the People’s Republic of China Web site.

As of 4 p.m. Tuesday, China time, 11 ships and more than 20 planes had been sent by the Chinese army and the local government to the site on the South China Sea where the incident took place, Foreign Ministry spokesman Sun Yuxi was quoted as saying. The search is apparently continuing.

"A loss of life complicates matters, and we are always sorry to see loss of life like that[BODY]," Gong said. "The Chinese people could have seen this as some sort of deliberate provocation [by the United States], but the main point is, we need both sides to look at this factually, calmly and professionally and deal with immediate issue at hand — that is getting our people and plane back."

Stars and Stripes staff writer Lisa Burgess contributed to this report.

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