Chinese Share Data on Site of WWII Crash

When Chinese President Jiang Zemin met President Clinton on Sunday, he carried with him a small gift--a photo album and a videocassette documenting the recently discovered crash site in China of a World War II-era U.S. bomber.

Jiang invited the United States to send a team to examine the site in an attempt to identify the aircraft, believed to be a B-24, and the remains of its crew, which are still in the plane more than half a century after it went down.

After learning of the discovery of the wreckage in Guangxi province, Chinese authorities notified members of Secretary of State Warren Christopher’s staff when he was in Beijing last week.

“The Chinese said [that] just a couple of days before we [got there] . . . they had discovered this,” said Winston Lord, an assistant secretary of state. “How they discovered it, why they discovered it, at this point I haven’t the slightest idea.

“They said, ‘We’ve just gotten this, please keep it confidential and we’ll try to get more information by the time of the presidents’ meeting,’ ” Lord added. “At the presidents’ meeting, they handed [Clinton] an album of photographs and a videotape. I don’t know yet how much has been analyzed. They did specify that it’s the remnants of a plane and there are remains.”