Clock Is Ticking for Washington

WASHINGTON — As the Bush administration scrambles to prevent its first foreign policy emergency from escalating into a crisis, its biggest adversary may be the clock.

With each passing hour, the ability of Washington and Beijing to end their standoff over the crippled American surveillance plane and its 24-member crew without rupturing future U.S.-China relations becomes more difficult, foreign policy analysts and former U.S. officials said Tuesday.

“None of this gets better or easier with time,” said Kenneth Lieberthal, who oversaw Asia policy for the National Security Council during the Clinton administration.

“With each day, the risk grows that one side will escalate the rhetoric and the other will respond, or that public sentiment is whipped up to a point that makes it far more difficult to resolve,” Lieberthal said in a telephone interview from China. “These have already become real dangers.”

If no progress is made within the next 48 hours, U.S. officials will probably begin choosing from a range of possible punitive actions, analysts and former officials said. Among the options:

* The United States could recall its ambassador, a symbolic step that could prove counterproductive as regards future diplomacy.

* It could take economic measures, such as refusing to renew China’s normal trading status, restricting Chinese access to U.S. technology or shutting down other channels of trade.

* It could agree to sell Taiwan the advanced military equipment that Taipei wants and Beijing opposes. A decision is due this month, but many U.S. analysts had expected President Bush to defer consideration of the more contentious elements of Taiwan’s request.

In the meantime, foreign policy experts offered two key recommendations for negotiating with Beijing: Keep it simple, and make it quick.

Some analysts said Washington should deal separately with three major elements of the standoff: release of the crew, return of the plane and agreement on what really happened in the sky off the Chinese coast.

“The most important thing is to separate out the question of who is responsible from the safe return of the personnel and the plane,” said James B. Steinberg, who served as deputy national security advisor in the Clinton administration. “As long as they are linked, it will be hard to find a resolution.”

Trying to negotiate all three issues at once could drag out the ordeal, increase the drama and introduce new complications, according to Steinberg and others.

Washington must do all it can to prevent the Chinese government from wrangling concessions on unrelated issues in exchange for release of the plane and its crew, they say.

To heighten pressure on Beijing, the administration may need to enlist the aid of other nations. “It will be important to get as much allied support as possible from the European Union, Japan, [South] Korea and others, for them to say this is not acceptable,” said Winston Lord, a former assistant secretary of State for East Asia.

The prospects of securing any kind of Chinese apology or admission of fault are virtually nil, U.S. analysts said.

“China’s version of events--that an American plane flying 250 mph crashed into a Chinese plane flying 450 mph--seems cockamamie,” said Robert L. Suettinger, a senior analyst at the Washington office of the Rand Corp. think tank. “But the Chinese military wouldn’t tell the truth to civilian authorities if a mistake had been made; it’s just not something they do. And the kind of inquiry the United States did after the [U.S.] submarine hit a Japanese fishing boat is not something the Chinese would even consider.”

The presumed death of a Chinese pilot in the collision plays to nationalist sentiments and may require the United States to make concessions it would not consider otherwise. “They will want compensation and an apology, issues which must be worked out quietly,” said James R. Lilley, former U.S. ambassador to China.

Throughout the negotiations, the human element is likely to loom as large as the policy considerations and could determine the lingering impact of the confrontation.

So far, the administration has chosen a moderate course, communicating largely behind the scenes despite pressures from conservative quarters to take a tougher stand.

At first, messages were relayed through U.S. envoys in Beijing and Chinese diplomats in Washington urging the Chinese government to take the long view. The U.S. arguments: Neither nation’s interests would be served by escalating the confrontation; Beijing is only beginning to establish relations with a new U.S. administration; and Washington had no hostile intent in flying surveillance planes along the coast, a practice allowed by international law.

Bush took the next step Monday, issuing a formal statement demanding more decisive action by Beijing. On Tuesday, he issued a second statement signaling the administration’s growing frustration. “We have allowed the Chinese government time to do the right thing,” he asserted. “But now it is time for the service men and women to come home.”

The president opted not to telephone Chinese President Jiang Zemin directly. U.S. analysts said that reflects the administration’s sensitivity to divisions within the Chinese government. A call might have had the unintended consequence of forcing Jiang to take a harder line to avoid being seen as caving in to the United States.

Some analysts caution that the United States should not let China’s internal problems alter its position in any fundamental way. Washington is on firm ground in claiming that its surveillance flights do not violate international agreements, they said.

“The administration can’t moderate its demands based on the fact China’s leadership is disunited or weak,” Suettinger said. Instead, he said, it “must stick by U.S. principles and act according to international conventions.”