Chinese President Jiang Zemin (江澤民) yesterday demanded the US accept full responsibility for the collision of a Chinese fighter and a US spy plane and halt all surveillance flights near China's coast.
In his first public comments on the incident, Jiang made no mention of the 24 US crew members of the surveillance plane now in their third day of captivity on the Chinese island of Hainan.
US President George W. Bush on Monday demanded immediate access to the crew and the return of the top-secret surveillance aircraft, which Washington's ambassador to Beijing said had probably already been combed over by Chinese officials.
China has accused the US EP-3 plane of veering into one of two F-8 fighters on an interception mission 104km south of Hainan in international air space.
"We have sufficient evidence," Jiang told the visiting Prime Minister of Qatar, Abdullah Bin Khalifa Al-Thani.
The US must "bear full responsibility," the official Xinhua news agency quoted him as saying.
US officials say they were told American diplomats waiting in Hainan would be allowed to see the 24 crew last night. But as darkness fell over the tropical island there was still no word of when a meeting would take place.
Two of the diplomats left their hotel in the southern city of Sanya and traveled to Haikou in the north of the island. That sparked speculation the crew might be taken to Haikou, which has an international airport.
"We cannot understand why the US often sent its planes to make surveillance flights in areas so close to China," Jiang said.
"And this time, in violation of international law and practice, the US plane bumped into our plane, invaded the Chinese territorial airspace and landed at our airport," he said.
Jiang said the US should stop such flights and this would be "conducive to the development of the China-US relationship."
US ambassador to China, Admiral Joseph Prueher, said he believed Chinese officials had been "all over" the US plane, which is a potential intelligence treasure trove.
Washington has warned China to stay off the plane, which it maintains is US sovereign territory under international law.
"We are sure that the crew is not on the airplane and we have every reason to think that the Chinese have been all over the airplane," Prueher said in an interview with ABC's Good Morning America.
Prueher told ABC it was unclear whether the crew had been forced off the aircraft.
"We don't know the circumstances and that's one reason we have been pressing so hard for access to the crew," he said.
He said the crew was trained to destroy sensitive materials in the event of an unplanned landing, but it was unclear how successful they might have been.
"We think that they, at least, started on some destruction of the material on the aircraft," he said.
Asked by CBS Television's Early Show whether he thought the US should take responsibility and apologize, Prueher said, "As a matter of fact, I do have a problem with it and I think our government would have a problem with it as well."
At a news conference, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhu Bangzao (
"We will strictly follow the relevant US-China agreements," he said, without elaborating.
"China has the right to investigate this. I will not say how the investigation is being done while the investigation is underway," he said.
US officials were growing increasingly frustrated as the hours dragged by without contact with the crew, last heard from shortly after they landed in Hainan on Sunday when they radioed that armed Chinese soldiers were boarding the plane.
Zhu said the crew members were safe.
Xinhua yesterday reported the Chinese pilot had parachuted from his plane and that Jiang had called for "utmost efforts" to find him in the South China Sea.
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