Crash likely to complicate U.S.-China ties

By Carol Giacomo

WASHINGTON (Reuters): The weekend collision between a U.S. Navy surveillance plane and a Chinese fighter jet is likely to complicate matters for President George W. Bush as he works out his approach to the communist giant and weighs arms sales to Taiwan.

Whether the incident does serious damage to U.S.-China relations may turn on how quickly Beijing returns the 24-member American crew and the EP-3 maritime patrol aircraft.

But an analyst said internal struggles within the Chinese government could thwart a quick resolution.

"A lot depends on what the Chinese do in the next couple of days," said Bates Gill, head of the Center for Northeast Asia Policy Studies at the Brookings Institution.

The longer the crew is detained, the more U.S. concerns will grow and the more Bush will come under domestic pressure to view China in a "threatening way," he said.

That scenario could make it harder for the president to resist arguments in favor of selling Taiwan a package of advanced weapons with which to defend itself against Beijing.

Gill, who speaks fluent Chinese and visits the country regularly, was not optimistic.

"The Chinese don't handle these things well," he told Reuters in a telephone interview.

The Chinese foreign ministry may want to resolve the matter but Chinese army leaders are likely to be angry and unwilling to surrender easily the prize of the crew and aircraft, he said.

Within the U.S. government there is a clash between hardliners, who view China and its communist leadership as a rising threat, and moderates, who say China is a rising power whose future role is not necessarily a threatening one.

U.S. Ambassador Joseph Prueher met the Chinese vice foreign minister in Beijing on Sunday in an effort to resolve the situation.

U.S. embassy officers were due to travel to Hainan Island to visit the crew on Monday.

The Bush administration expects the embassy officers will be given access to the crew, but how soon they might be released is unknown, a senior U.S. official said.

During the meeting with Prueher, the Chinese vice foreign minister "didn't have all the answers," he added.

The U.S. Navy said its plane was on a "routine surveillance mission" in international air space over the South China Sea when it was intercepted by two Chinese F-8 military planes.

China's Foreign Ministry described its aircraft as conducting "normal flight operations 10 km (six miles) south of Hainan island when a U.S. plane suddenly veered towards it," hitting the Chinese plane and causing it to crash.

Gill said the incident is likely to stir up passions in China, which claims sovereignty over the entire South China Sea, including islands also claimed wholly or partly by Brunei, Malaysia, the Philippines, Taiwan and Vietnam.

The United States officially takes no position on the territorial disputes, but insists that freedom of navigation must be maintained in the important sea route.

Just how much such incidents can fan tensions was shown in May 1999 when a U.S. plane serving with NATO bombed the Chinese embassy in Belgrade, killing three Chinese journalists.

NATO said the strike was a mistake but Chinese media asserted it was deliberate and Chinese-U.S. relations plummeted as anti- NATO demonstrators pelted the U.S. and British embassies with stones and bottles.

The aircraft collision occurred little more than two months after Bush took office and during a period in which his administration and Beijing are still feeling each other out and trying to establish a working relationship.

In the next few weeks, Bush is due to make a decision that could have a fundamental impact on the course of relations during his term -- whether to go ahead with U.S. arms sales to Taiwan.

Beijing considers Taiwan a renegade province that must be unified with the mainland and has waged a vigorous campaign to persuade Bush against the sale, particularly the transfer of AEGIS-equipped Arleigh Burke class guided missile destroyers.