China releases crew

by Martin Fackler
The Associated Press

BEIJING - Ending an intense 11-day standoff, China agreed yesterday to release the 24-member crew of an American spy plane after President Bush said the United States was "very sorry" for a Chinese pilot's death and the U.S. plane's landing without permission.

Within hours, a chartered Continental 737 had left the U.S. territory of Guam en route to China's Hainan island to retrieve the Americans. The Chinese government said it would keep the U.S. Navy's EP-3E surveillance plane until it could hold more talks with the United States starting April 18.

Yesterday's delicate, carefully worded compromise - characterized immediately by Chinese officials as an apology - capped days of tortuous linguistic negotiation over the release of the air crew and the in-flight collision that has threatened U.S.-China relations.

It offered a tolerable way out for the governments of two powerful, deeply intertwined nations that, in public, had maintained intractable positions. The United States evaded the full apology demanded by China, which nevertheless extracted an intricate series of expressions of sorrow from Washington.

Foreign Minister Tang Jiaxuan said the crew would be released on "humanitarian grounds" as soon as "appropriate travel procedures" were completed.

"It won't be long," said Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Sun Yuxi. "The procedures are already under way."

A senior Bush administration official said the White House expected the crew to be released early today in China, or late yesterday in U.S. time zones. The official said it would take several hours to get a plane to Hainan, the crew boarded and aircraft fueled.

"This has been a difficult situation for both our countries," Bush said. "I know the American people join me in expressing sorrow for the loss of life of a Chinese pilot. Our prayers are with his wife and his child."

Some issues remained unresolved, including the fate of the plane, which has been held on Hainan since April 1. The aircraft made an emergency landing there after colliding with a Chinese fighter jet over international waters. The Chinese pilot, Wang Wei, is missing and presumed dead.

China indicated it would hold the plane pending more talks later this month. American officials assume Chinese experts have stripped the craft of its sophisticated surveillance equipment.

U.S. officials said there were no plans to end the practice of flying spy planes in international airspace near China. Chinese officials have denounced the surveillance flights as a violation of national sovereignty.

"It must be pointed out that this case has not concluded yet," Sun said.

President Jiang Zemin has been on a 12-day Latin American tour through much of the crisis. It wasn't immediately clear who else in the Chinese government was managing the situation at home or who had a say in deciding to release the crew, or to what extent the Chinese military was involved in the process.

In addition, there were very few of the direct pronouncements from top officials that are typical in situations when China feels its sovereignty or dignity has been threatened.

Jiang, who arrived in Brasilia, Brazil, from Uruguay, did not immediately answer questions about the settlement.

Relations with China, always a balancing act, chilled further in 1999 when NATO planes bombed the Chinese embassy in Belgrade during air strikes against Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic. American officials said it was an accident; China expressed doubt, and the United States apologized unconditionally.

Despite their differences, the two countries are bound as never before by hundreds of billions of dollars in trade. China wants U.S. support to join the World Trade Organization this year and win its bid to host the 2008 Olympics.