US President George W. Bush took a hard line in the aftermath of the Sino-American spy plane standoff, pledging stout defense of US interests tempered with respect for China following the return of the plane's crew.
"The US and China must make a determined choice to have a productive relationship that will contribute to a more secure, more prosperous and more peaceful world," Bush said on Thursday at the White House.
As the spy plane crew returned home, Chinese President Jiang Zemin (江澤民) arrived in nearby Cuba with a message of solidarity for fellow communist President Fidel Castro and his government's decades-old dispute with Washington.
Although at times conciliatory towards Beijing, Bush said he would tell US officials to ask "tough questions" when the two sides meet on Wednesday to discuss a mid-air collision between the spy plane and a Chinese F-8 fighter that led to the standoff.
He also suggested he would continue surveillance flights off the coast of China, despite Chinese objections.
"The kind of incident we have just been through does not advance a constructive relationship between our two countries," Bush said. "Reconnaissance flights are a part of a comprehensive national security strategy that helps maintain peace and stability in our world."
Bush said the US and China had fundamental disagreements over human rights, religious freedom and Asian security but he also highlighted common interests, including trade and stopping the spread of weapons of mass destruction.
"I will always stand squarely for American interests and American values," he said. "And those will, no doubt, sometimes cause disagreements with China, yet I will approach our differences in a spirit of respect."
Bush warmly praised the 24-member spy plane crew, whose aircraft made an emergency landing on China's Hainan Island after the April 1 collision.
A senior White House official later said Bush wanted to send a clear message to Beijing.
"[The comments were] designed to send a signal that China has to choose to work with us to have a productive relationship," the official said. "This is an important relationship and we need to get it right."
Meanwhile, a senior US diplomat said in Beijing yesterday that aggressive flying by the Chinese fighter pilot caused the mid-air collision with the US spy plane and that Beijing's mishandling of the incident intensified the standoff.
The diplomat, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the collision occurred when the Chinese fighter pilot flew within 1m to 1.5m of the US plane, lost control and clipped an outer engine of the four-engined US plane.
"Our assessment is this wasn't a deliberate act in any way of coming out to try to ram the EP-3, it was a rendezvous that was not accomplished very well," the envoy told reporters in Beijing.
He faulted China's handling of the collision.
"The Chinese leadership appears to me to have chosen a path of confrontation when there were other paths available to them to try to solve this issue," the official said. "I think they've gained some short-term advantages, but I don't think they've gained big ones in the long haul."
The envoy added, however, that it was unclear to the US whether "the Chinese leadership had accurate facts presented to them when they made their initial decision. There's a possibility they were not presented with accurate information."
The US crew was being debriefed in Hawaii, but initial interviews produced an account of a tense encounter with People's Liberation Army (PLA) troops after the crippled US plane landed at Hainan's Lingshui airbase.
"They estimated that it was about 15 minutes on the ground," a second senior diplomat said. "They were surrounded by heavily armed PLA soldiers who were making it clear to them in spite of the language difference that they wanted them off the plane."
The second diplomat declined to specify how much of the sensitive US electronic eavesdropping equipment and software was destroyed before the crew was forced to leave the plane.
"They did so in danger because the Chinese were trying to get them to stop completing their procedures," he said. The PLA soldiers drew their guns, but did not fire, he said.
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