The Kansas City Star 04/09/01
Bush administration cites some positive signs in China standoff
By ROBIN WRIGHT and HENRY CHU -WASHINGTON -- The Bush administration said Monday that it saw small but encouraging signs of movement in the spy plane standoff. Officials cited improved conditions for the 24 U.S. crew members and acknowledgment by China's state-controlled media that negotiations for their release were under way. The tentative signals followed a fourth meeting between U.S. diplomats and members of the detained crew on southern Hainan Island.
China's public characterization of the incident, in which a Chinese fighter jet collided with a U.S. surveillance plane, also had slightly eased. In Beijing, U.S. Ambassador Joseph Prueher, the lead mediator, told reporters: "We hope we are moving a little closer toward a solution."
In Washington, a senior U.S. official who spoke on condition of anonymity added: "I have a feeling we're in the end game, but I'm not sure how long it will last. With the Chinese the end game can last a long time. They get all they're going to get, and then they go back and try to get more. Our job right now is to tell them they have all they're going to get."
The Chinese may not see it that way, at least for public consumption. Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhu Bangzao said Monday that U.S. statements so far were "still unacceptable to the Chinese people." "We are highly unsatisfied," he told a news conference in Buenos Aires, Argentina, where he is accompanying President Jiang Zemin. The Chinese leader is on a tour of Latin America. "We ask the United States to take responsibility for this incident in a clear and active way by apologizing to the Chinese people. We think this is the key to solving the problem," Zhu said.
Bush administration officials said they were using a three-pronged approach to try to win release of the 21 men and three women, who today mark their 10th day in captivity. The three steps involve an expression of regret over the incident and sorrow for the loss of the Chinese pilot, an exchange of explanations for the cause of the midair collision, and arrangements for talks on issues of mutual concern, mediated by a maritime commission formed in 1998. At this point the negotiations largely center on the exchange of explanations, according to U.S. officials.
Prueher, who met twice with Chinese Foreign Ministry officials Monday, is now involved in "many intense conversations," White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said. "They are working on language; they are working on wording." The State Department said that "very intense discussions" between U.S. and Chinese diplomats in Beijing had reached a "sensitive moment."
President Bush acknowledged that diplomacy required patience, but he warned of the dangers ahead for China if the crew was not released soon. "All of us around this table understand diplomacy takes time. But there is a point, the longer it goes, there's a point at which our relations with China could become damaged," Bush said at a morning Cabinet meeting. Bush's letter to the wife of the missing Chinese pilot was to be delivered overnight Monday, U.S. officials said.
Many Chinese think it is unlikely that the crew members will be released until the search for the pilot is over. Even then, they add, Beijing may wait another day or more to allow a period of mourning for the pilot -- who has become a national hero -- before releasing the Americans.
Few expect the pilot, Wang Wei, to be found alive, but the search for him has grown in recent days to a scale that suggests its purpose is as much political as it is practical. It has taken on near-mythic proportions, with China billing it as involving more troops, covering more area and lasting longer than any previous search in the country's naval history. "I consider it politically difficult to stop searching for him," said Shen Dingli, a Chinese-American relations expert at Fudan University in Shanghai, "particularly while negotiations for the release of the Americans are ongoing and there is a technical possibility that he is alive."
The American crew has been held on China's Hainan Island since the U.S. Navy EP-3 surveillance plane made an emergency landing there after colliding with Wang's F-8 fighter, one of two jets that had intercepted it.
Brig. Gen. Neal Sealock, the defense attache at the U.S. Embassy in Beijing, reported after a Monday evening meeting with the 21 men and three women that they were being kept out of the Hainan Island's soggy heat by air conditioning. To pass the time they are doing crossword puzzles provided by the embassy and reading the English-language China Daily. Communal meals of Chinese food are provided, about which a few crew members have reportedly raved. There is television to watch, but only Chinese channels. There is mail call -- or e-mail call. Family and friends of the crew have been sending e-mail to Sealock's wife in Beijing. She forwards them to a Chinese intermediary who prints them out and distributes them. The volume of e-mail messages has grown steadily since the group began receiving them last week, U.S. officials say.
"Their spirits are extremely high," Sealock said after the latest meeting. No Chinese were present during the 40-minute meeting.
The general has asked to see the crew twice a day until they are released. His sessions are largely devoted to pep talks and news updates. He has talked about everything from Hideo Nomo's no-hitter for the Boston Red Sox last week to how the diplomatic standoff over the crew is playing in the States.
Also Monday, U.S. officials said that commercial and government satellite photos showed seven Chinese military trucks parked next to the plane, fueling speculation that Chinese specialists had begun removing sensitive intelligence-gathering equipment. Some former government analysts said the commercial photos appeared to show Chinese workers ripping apart the plane's fuselage, but a senior Defense Department official dismissed those claims. He said a higher-resolution government photo taken four hours later showed the fuselage intact.
John Pike, a defense and intelligence analyst who is director of GlobalSecurity.org, said the commercial photos, taken by Space Imaging, a Colorado firm, showed "a big chunk out of the right rear fuselage."
Patrick G. Eddington, who worked for the CIA as a satellite photo interpreter from 1988 to 1996, cautioned that light and shadow could play tricks with satellite images. But he said he also thought the Space Imaging photos showed that part of the plane was being disassembled.
The New York Times and The Washington Post contributed to this report.
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