By
The Associated Press
BEIJING - A U.S. Navy surveillance plane collided with a Chinese fighter jet that intercepted it over the South China Sea yesterday and made an emergency landing in China, a U.S. military spokesman said.
The 24 American crew members were not injured, said Col. John Bratton, a spokesman for the U.S. Pacific Command in Hawaii. The Chinese government said the fighter crashed and its pilot was missing.
The EP-3 was on a routine surveillance flight in international airspace when two Chinese fighters intercepted it, Bratton said. The EP-3 is an unarmed four-engine propeller plane equipped to listen in on radio signals and monitor radar sites.
The collision appeared to be an accident and the Chinese did not force the plane down, Bratton said.
"The planes actually bumped into each other," said another Pacific Command spokesman, Lt. Col. Dewey Ford.
The incident comes at a touchy time in the United States' relations with China. The Bush administration has taken a more wary attitude toward Beijing, and China's recent detention of two scholars with links to the United States has further raised distrust.
A Chinese academic said encounters with Chinese fighters are frequent as U.S. planes fly along China's coast eavesdropping on military communications.
"It's very regular for the American Navy to have their planes intruding into Chinese airspace," said Yan Xuetong, an expert in international studies at Tsinghua University in Beijing. "The Chinese then send up fighters and chase them out."
The U.S. military would not say how close yesterday's flight came to Chinese airspace.
The Chinese Foreign Ministry said the collision occurred at 9:07 a.m. some 62 miles southeast of Hainan, a large island off the southern Chinese coast.
Two Chinese fighters were sent up to track the plane as it approached Chinese airspace, said the ministry statement.
"The U.S. plane abruptly diverted toward the Chinese planes, and its head and left wing collided with one of the Chinese planes, causing the Chinese plane to crash," the statement said.
It said rescuers were searching for the missing Chinese pilot.
The EP-3 landed at a military airfield at Lingshui, a town on the southern end of Hainan, the statement said.
Hainan is a large island on China's south coast that is covered with military bases because of its proximity to Vietnam and the Spratly Islands, claimed by China and five other countries.
Bratton did not know the status of the crew, but he said the Chinese appeared responsive to U.S. requests that they be well treated and returned. They were believed to still be in Hainan.
"We see no problems with retrieving the crew," Bratton said.
The U.S. Embassy in Beijing "communicated our concern about the incident" to the Chinese government, Bratton said. U.S. authorities in Washington contacted the Chinese Embassy there as well.
In a statement, the Pacific Command said it asked China "expedite any necessary repairs to the aircraft, and facilitate the immediate return of the aircraft and crew."
The U.S. plane had taken off from Kadena Air Base in Okinawa, Japan, the U.S. military said.
