Spy Flight Talks Yield No Breakthrough

Two days of tough talks between the United States and China over American surveillance flights concluded Thursday without word of an agreement on key issues separating the two sides.

Officials of the two countries characterized the second day of discussions as frank and productive, but neither side achieved its stated goal. Beijing is seeking a halt to U.S. aerial surveillance missions off the Chinese coast while Washington wants the return of a damaged Navy spy plane stuck in southern China after a midair collision April 1 with a Chinese fighter jet.

U.S. officials gave the Chinese written proposals for returning the EP-3 reconnaissance plane. They suggested sending technical experts to either repair the aircraft and fly it home from Hainan island or disassemble it and return it in containers.

U.S. officials said they expect to continue the discussions through regular diplomatic channels in the days ahead, as soon as Chinese officials receive instructions from their superiors. A meeting scheduled for Monday was postponed to allow the two sides to prepare their positions, officials said.

Peter Verga, the lead U.S. negotiator, called Thursday’s session “very productive.” He said officials “covered all the items that were on the agenda” in the 2 1/2-hour meeting. Verga, a deputy undersecretary of Defense, and his seven-member team are returning to Washington today.

Zhang Qiyue, a spokeswoman for the Foreign Ministry, told reporters that “the two sides agreed to continue discussions and stay in touch.”

The talks were aimed at reconciling differences over the midair collision, which sent Sino-American relations into a tailspin.

Each side blames the other for the collision, which killed the pilot of the Chinese aircraft, Lt. Cmdr. Wang Wei. The 24 crew members of the EP-3 were detained for 11 days after the accident, until a carefully negotiated letter from the U.S. secured their release.

The conflict also has become a contest over competing video images from the two nations.

For the first time Thursday, Chinese officials offered video clips to illustrate what they say is their “very convincing” proof that the U.S. side was at fault for the accident.

Taking a page from the Pentagon’s playbook, the Foreign Ministry produced video images of previous encounters between what appeared to be U.S. and Chinese fighter jets, saying the footage was evidence of aggressive flying tactics by the Americans. The video was put forward to counter the Pentagon’s release last week of footage showing a Chinese airman purportedly engaging in reckless flying behavior.

One clip shows an American aircraft and a Chinese jet coming very close to each other as a group of Chinese fighters intercept the U.S. plane. But it is not clear from the tape which of the two close-flying aircraft, the U.S. or the Chinese, narrowed the gap.

Nor did the video include any footage of an encounter between Chinese fighters and a surveillance plane such as the EP-3, a slower-moving, propeller-driven craft that is far less maneuverable than the smaller jets. The Chinese military maintains that during the April 1 collision, the EP-3 swerved into the path of the F-8 fighter, a maneuver the U.S. contends is virtually impossible.

At the Pentagon, chief spokesman Rear Adm. Craig Quigley said the U.S. fighters shown in the Chinese clips were “prudent” in their flights.

The U.S. aircraft in the video “are roughly on the same altitude, easily seen and well to the side” of the Chinese jets, he said.

The Foreign Ministry also released a computer-animated simulation of the April 1 accident--a version that shows the EP-3 veering to the left and causing the collision--and photos of the crippled U.S. plane, whose damage patterns support Beijing’s account of what happened, according to Zhang.

The spokeswoman added that a memorial service for Wang will be held today, an event that could inflame public anger against the U.S. The state-run media here have alternately fed and checked nationalistic anger over the collision.

Within the U.S. government, debate continued about whether fighter jets should also be deployed when the EP-3s resume flights off the southern Chinese coast, which could come in a few days.

Some officials have proposed that fighters either escort the reconnaissance planes or fly at a distance from the aircraft as an expression of American resolve.

But some military officials contend that escort flights risk provoking the Chinese, and they argue that the best defense for the U.S. planes is the legal protection they have when flying unarmed in what the U.S. considers international airspace.

In another development, the State Department announced that Chinese authorities have detained a U.S. citizen of Chinese origin in the southern city of Guangzhou on suspicion of spying for Taiwan.

The man, Wu Jianming, was detained April 8, and a U.S. consular officer visited him Saturday, State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said.

“They’ve informed us that Mr. Wu is being investigated for alleged espionage activities against China on behalf of Taiwan,” he said. The U.S. is concerned about the case, as it is about the detention of a Hong Kong-based American academic and two other China-born scholars, he said.

Thursday’s talks in Beijing came just a few days before Washington decides on arms sales to Taiwan, which China considers a renegade province. Some American lawmakers have called for beefed-up weapons sales to Taiwan in the wake of the standoff over the crippled EP-3.

The island’s military is scheduled to stage one of its regular drills today to demonstrate how it would repel an invasion from the mainland. Taiwanese defense officials are pressing Washington for sophisticated naval destroyers and weapons-tracking systems that they say are necessary for the defense of the island.

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Chu reported from Beijing and Richter from Washington.