After rejecting Beijing's demand for US$1 million, the US is sending China US$34,576 to pay for support of a crippled US Navy surveillance aircraft that collided with a Chinese fighter jet in April.
US officials, who asked not to be identified, said there was no word yet on whether China would accept the payment, which was en route to the US Embassy in Beijing for transmission to the Chinese Foreign Ministry.
Navy Rear Admiral Craig Quigley, a defense department spokesman, told reporters at the Pentagon's regular briefing that "an appropriate amount of money" was being sent to the Chinese. But he declined to discuss the amount.
The crippled US Navy EP-3 reconnaissance plane landed on China's Hainan island on April 1 after colliding with a fighter jet in international airspace.
It did not leave a military airfield there until July 3 when it was dismantled and flown back to the US for repairs.
China held the 24-member EP-3 crew for 11 days after the collision in a standoff that roiled US-China relations in the first months of the administration of President George W. Bush.
"We are giving them a figure, a total figure that we feel is an appropriate amount of money for some of the support that they provided to us during that period of time," Quigley told reporters, adding that the Chinese demand for about US$1 million for everything from food for the crewmen to support services for the EP-3 was unrealistic.
"In some instances, we just didn't think that the figure was appropriate at all," he said of the separate fees listed for individual services by the Chinese.
"There was a particular dollar figure attached to each element of what the Chinese had given to us that they felt was appropriate. We did not agree with each of those categories nor their dollar figures. So we took an independent look at that," the spokesman told reporters.
"And where we felt that there was a fair value provided by the Chinese, we tried to provide a fair dollar value to that service. And that is what the total represents."
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