China Jets Intercept U.S. Navy Plane
washingtonpost.com
By Joe McDonald
Associated Press Writer
Sunday, April 1, 2001; 3:00 p.m. EDT
BEIJING –– A U.S. Navy surveillance plane collided with a Chinese fighter jet sent to intercept it over the South China Sea on Sunday and made an emergency landing in China. The Chinese government said the fighter crashed and its pilot was missing.
"The U.S. side has total responsibility for this event," the Chinese Foreign Ministry said in a statement read late Sunday on state television.
The collision happened Sunday morning off the southern Chinese island of Hainan, according to China and U.S. military spokesmen. The American EP-3 plane landed at a military airfield on Hainan.
The status of the crew and control of the plane on the ground were unclear. None of the 24 crew members was injured, said Col. John Bratton, a spokesman for the U.S. Pacific Command in Hawaii.
Chinese officials assured the United States the crew is safe, and American diplomats were going to Hainan to see them, said U.S. Ambassador Joseph Prueher. He said he had talked several times with U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell.
"It appears also the Chinese have lost an aircraft and we're sorry that occurred," Prueher, a retired Navy admiral and commander of U.S. forces in the Pacific, said as he left his Embassy at 1:15 a.m. on Monday.
President Bush was briefed on the episode Sunday morning, an administration official said.
The U.S. plane was on a routine surveillance flight in international airspace when two Chinese fighters intercepted it, said Bratton. The EP-3 is an unarmed four-engine propeller-driven plane equipped to listen in on radio signals and monitor radar sites.
China claims most of the South China Sea as its territorial waters – a claim rejected by countries that use the vast expanse of ocean for shipping.
The collision appeared to be an accident and the Chinese did not force the plane down, Bratton said. Cmdr. Rex Totty, another spokesman for the Pacific Command, said the Navy talked with the crew after they landed but had no contact since then.
The incident comes at an uneasy time in U.S.-Chinese relations. The Bush administration has taken a more wary attitude toward Beijing, and China's recent detention of two scholars with links to the United States has further raised distrust.
The collision coincided with news reports Sunday that U.S. military experts will recommend new weapons sales to Taiwan that could heighten tensions with Beijing. China regards Taiwan as a renegade province, and has protested American weapons sales to the island democracy.
Nick Cook, an aviation expert with Jane's Defense Weekly in London, said the U.S. military routinely sends surveillance aircraft such as the EP-3 to monitor China's military.
The EP-3 can pick up radio, radar, telephone, e-mail and fax traffic, Cook said. He said the plane is the size of a 150-seat commercial airliner, with most of its space taken up by monitoring equipment.
The U.S. plane took off from Kadena Air Base in Okinawa, Japan, the U.S. military said. It is based at Whidbey Island Naval Air Station in Washington state and was flying with a crew of 22 Navy personnel and one each from the Air Force and the Marines.
Bates Gill, a China expert at the Brookings Institution in Washington, said China was acting like any military power by trying to ward off "activities aimed at its airspace."
The collision with the American plane is a "small victory" from China's perspective, Gill said. "You've sent the message about intruding in airspace. You forced it to land. You've got your hands on it."
One Chinese academic claimed that in-flight encounters were common with U.S. surveillance aircraft flying along China's coastline listening to its military.
"It's very regular for the American Navy to have their planes intruding into Chinese airspace," said Yan Xuetong, an expert in international studies at Tsinghua University in Beijing. "The Chinese then send up fighters and chase them out."
Totty, the U.S. military spokesman, confirmed that interceptions are common but denied that U.S. planes routinely intrude on Chinese airspace.
"Our aircraft routinely operate in international air space on reconnaissance missions and it is routine for Chinese aircraft to respond by intercepting and shadowing us," Totty said.
The Chinese Foreign Ministry said the collision occurred at 9:07 a.m. some 62 miles southeast of Hainan, a large island off the southern Chinese coast. Totty said it happened about 50 nautical miles, or 58 statute miles, southeast of the island.
Two Chinese fighters were sent up to track the plane as it approached Chinese airspace, said the statement.
"The U.S. plane abruptly diverted toward the Chinese planes, and its head and left wing collided with one of the Chinese planes, causing the Chinese plane to crash," the statement said.
It said rescuers were searching for the missing Chinese pilot.
The EP-3 landed at a military airfield at Lingshui, a town on the southern end of Hainan, the statement said.
Totty said he had no information about whether either airplane had diverted course.
"We want to know why contact was made," he said. "They were intercepting us on a routine mission, and during the intercept contact was made. How it happened, we're not able to say at this time."
Cook noted a similar collision in the 1980s between a Soviet fighter jet and a Norwegian P-3 – similar to the EP-3 – over the Barents Sea, which lies north of Norway and Russia. Both planes landed safely, he said.
In a statement, the Pacific Command said it asked China "expedite any necessary repairs to the aircraft, and facilitate the immediate return of the aircraft and crew."
Bratton said the Chinese appeared responsive to U.S. requests to treat the crew well and return them. They were believed to be still in Hainan.
"We see no problems with retrieving the crew," Bratton said. The Chinese statement said "proper arrangements" had been made for them, but did not say where they were. The Chinese Foreign Ministry statement said it had made a "serious ... protest."
© Copyright 2001 The Associated Press |
