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To: long-gone who wrote (66910)	4/3/2001 9:31:14 AM
From: Rarebird	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 116759

Jiang says U.S. responsible for collision Tuesday, April 03, 2001 06:28 AM EDT HONG KONG, Apr 03, 2001 (United Press International via COMTEX) -- Chinese President Jiang Zemin on Tuesday said the United States should bear full responsibility for the collision between a Chinese military jet and a U.S. surveillance plane as the diplomatic standoff between China and the United States heated up on its third day. "The responsibility fully lies with the American side. We have full evidence for that," Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhu Bangzao quoted the president as saying. He said Jiang's comments came as he met Tuesday morning with the visiting prime minister of Qatar, Abdullah bin Khalifa al-Thani. "It is the U.S. airplane that flew against the rules, made dangerous maneuvers, damaged our airplane. We cannot understand why the U.S. side conducts frequent reconnaissance flights so close to China," Zhu quoted Jiang as saying. "The United States should stop similar flights in airspace near to Chinese coastal seas so as to prevent similar accidents from happening again," Jiang said, according to the spokesman. "And this time, in violation of international law and practice, the U.S. plane bumped into our plane, invaded the Chinese territorial airspace and landed at our airport," Jiang said during the meeting, China's official Xinhua news agency said. U.S. diplomats waited on the island of Hainan, off China's southern coast, on Tuesday to see the 24 crew members of a U.S. Navy EP-3 surveillance plane that made an emergency landing there on Sunday after colliding with a Chinese F-8 fighter. U.S. officials in Washington were told that American diplomats waiting in Hainan would be allowed to visit the crew Tuesday night, local time. But White House officials said the timetable is too slow. President George W. Bush Monday demanded "immediate access" to the crew and called for release of the plane "without any further tampering." In Beijing, U.S. Ambassador to China Adm. Joseph Prueher told reporters Tuesday, "We are very pleased that we are going to see them tonight, or we expect to see them tonight." The crew was last heard from shortly after the plane landed at the Lingshui military airfield in Hainan on Sunday. Crew members issued a radio dispatch saying the plane had landed and that armed Chinese military were already making their way on board. Through diplomatic channels the Chinese Foreign Ministry has assured Washington and Beijing that the crew is safe and in good health. The crew was trained to destroy the highly sensitive equipment and classified material aboard the aircraft in such an emergency. "If the plan called on them to destroy classified material, you can bet that's what they were doing," a Navy official told the Washington Post. The Taipei Times, meanwhile, reported Tuesday that the U.S. aircraft was attempting to collect data on China's most advanced warship -- a Russian-made Sovremenny-class destroyer -- when it collided with the jet fighter. The Times quotes an intelligence source as saying Taiwan detected the Navy EP-3 on radar flying in circles at a low altitude near the destroyer. The intelligence source said two Chinese jet fighters taking off from their base in Guangdong Province arrived to intercept and drive away the Navy plane, which then attempted to fly away after colliding with one of the Chinese jets. The Navy plane is equipped with highly classified sensitive surveillance equipment used to detect and analyze electronic signals emitted by adversary weapons and communications systems. A former Pentagon intelligence official told United Press International the crew would have erased the crypto-analytic and other software before landing, essentially wiping their memories clean to keep the information and capabilities out of Chinese hands. Although the Chinese might have access to the hardware, the software that runs it would be almost impossible to penetrate. The official said the shutdown of all the software on board the aircraft would explain why there was only brief contact with the crew on landing. U.S. officials insist the plane has sovereign immunity, meaning it is the territory of the United States. "Our view is that military aircraft have sovereign immunity under international law and practice. We made that view quite clear to the Chinese," State Department spokesman Richard Boucher told reporters. A U.S. defense official said the Pentagon believes the Chinese boarded the plane because the last radio communication from the crew said they were being ordered to shut down their operation, presumably from inside the cabin. But until U.S. officials meet with the crew this information can not be confirmed, the official said. If the Chinese boarded the plane, Beijing could be in violation of international law, further straining already icy relations between the United States and China. This incident has shaped up as Bush's first major foreign policy crisis, which comes at a time of increasing tensions between Washington and Beijing. Relations chilled markedly March 22, when Bush refused to give visiting Chinese Vice Premier Qian Qichen assurances that the United States would not sell high-tech warships to Taiwan in the annual April arms deal between Washington and Taipei. The Bush administration considers China a strategic adversary, not a strategic partner. The warships are equipped with the Navy's most advanced anti-missile radar system, and could also be used to shoot down Chinese ballistic missiles. (Mark Kukis at the White House, Eli J. Lake at the State Department and Pam Hess at the Pentagon contributed to this report.) By KATHERINE ARMS Copyright 2001 by United Press International. News provided by COMTEX comtexnews.com