-Caveat Lector- WJPBR Email News List [EMAIL PROTECTED] Peace at any cost is a Prelude to War! Standoff Over; China to Release U.S. Navy Crew AP Chinese President Jiang Zemin Wednesday, April 11, 2001 Email this Article The 11-day standoff between the United States and China moved toward resolution Wednesday, with a U.S. plane arriving in China to retrieve the crew of a Navy surveillance plane that landed on Chinese soil after colliding with a Chinese fighter jet April 1, Pentagon sources told Fox News. The civilian plane landed at the airport at Haikou -- the capital of southern Hainan island --moments before a convoy of two minivans and several cars pulled out of the military guest house where the crew have been held headed for the airport as well. The plane is a chartered Continental Airlines Boeing 737 that hours earlier left the U.S. territory of Guam to retreive the Americans. President Bush told Reuters that he expected the plane to depart China with the 24-member crew for Guam, and then later Hawaii, in a matter of hours. Pentagon officials told Fox News that the plane could depart China even more quickly, possibly taking off as early as 7:00 or 7:30 p.m. It will take only minutes after takeoff from Hainan to be out of Chinese airspace. At that point the Pentagon will do a briefing, which will mainly focus on the homecoming schedule for the next 24 hours and the next few days. The crew, which has been detained on Hainan island since the collision, was being released Wednesday as part of a deal in which the Bush administration said it was "very sorry" both for the plane landing in China and for the collision that killed the Chinese fighter pilot. "This has been a difficult situation for both countries," President Bush said early Wednesday. "We are working on arrangements to pick them up and bring them home." In a carefully negotiated statement, the U.S. said it was "very sorry" that the U.S. plane was forced to land in Chinese territory, but stopped short of issuing the apology for the crash that the Chinese had been demanding. The statement also expressed regret for the presumed death of the Chinese pilot whose fighter jet collided with the U.S. Navy EP-3E surveillance plane, whom the Chinese media have lionized as a patriot who crashed defending his country. "I know the American people join me in expressing sorrow for the loss of life of a Chinese pilot," Bush said during a Wednesday press conference. "Our prayers are with his wife and his child." Bush said the American people and the relatives of the men and women who were detained "are proud of our crew and we look forward to welcoming them home." On Monday and again on Tuesday, Bush warned China that its relationship with the U.S. could be damaged or jeopardized if the 24 Americans were not freed soon. Stolen Secrets? While the crew members will be coming home Wednesday, their plane, which was loaded with high-tech surveillance equipment when it was forced into the emergency landing on Hainan, will remain in China. The agreement brokered between China and the U.S. calls for a meeting between the governments on April 18 to discuss the return of the plane. U.S. surveillance photos have shown a line of trucks near the plane, indicating that the Chinese are examining the highly classified aircraft. "We still have some problems with the airplane and we have to keep the airplane and to make further investigation," said Shen Guofang, China's deputy ambassador to the United Nations. "The airplane violates our territory and the land without permission, so that is the problem." U.S. officials are operating under the assumption that the Chinese have stripped the plane of sophisticated surveillance equipment. They said their focus in talks was getting the crew back to America, and the fate of the plane was unclear. Rep. Porter Goss, R-Fla., chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, praised the crew's efforts to destroy secret information. "These folks did an extremely good job under extremely difficult circumstances, and it appears that they minimized any possible compromise to the greatest degree possible," Goss said. Who's to Blame? A senior U.S. official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the administration successfully resisted a Chinese demand that the letter to China say the plane violated Chinese airspace, a point Secretary of State Colin Powell had insisted upon. "With ... respect to the right of the United States to continue to operate our aircraft in international airspace, that really is a given," Vice President Dick Cheney said on the Diane Rehm Show on WAMU-FM in Washington. "That is not a subject that we would want to concede on." The letter notes China's demand that the future of U.S. reconnaissance near China be discussed at the April 18 meeting. U.S. officials said there were no plans to end the practice of flying surveillance planes in international airspace near China, but refused to characterize the significance of the letter's statement while the crew was still detained. On Tuesday, the U.S. Defense Department released more details aimed at backing up its argument that the U.S. plane was not to blame for the collision. A Pentagon official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the crew had reported that the Chinese fighter made two close passes before the collision, bolstering the argument that its pilot was recklessly aggressive. Though U.S. diplomats have met five times with the crew since the collision, those meetings have been limited by the presence of Chinese officials and the U.S. fear that the meeting rooms were bugged. Pentagon officials say they still have not gotten the complete story of the crash. Reunion Imminent The letter to China also expressed appreciation for "China's efforts to see to the well being" of the crew. American diplomats reported to Washington that the 24 detainees were in good spirits, getting catered meals, email from home and even baseball scores. In Beijing, Chinese Foreign Minister Tang Jiaxuan cited humanitarian grounds for releasing the crew, adding that "China puts great importance on its relations with the United States." Under the terms of the agreement, a U.S. charter plane will pick the crew up on Hainan. After a brief refueling stop on Guam, the crew will be taken to Hawaii, where it will spend several days being debriefed by U.S. officials. The plane had left Guam and was en route to Hainan as of 12:45 p.m. EST, Fox News has learned. After the debriefing, the crew will be flown back to Whidbey Island, Wash., to be reunited with their eager families. "Yippee!," exclaimed Amanda de Jesus of Long Beach, Calif., mother of crewman Josef Edmunds, upon hearing that her son would soon be released. "All that mattered to me was getting my son back alive." Fern Sonan of Lenhartsville, Pa., mother of Lt. Marcia Sonon, heard about her daughter's pending release on television and was waiting for a call from the Navy. "I think it's great. We're really proud of Marcia," she said, hurrying to get off the telephone. Fox News' Steve Centanni and the Associated Press contributed to this report. *COPYRIGHT NOTICE** In accordance with Title 17 U. S. C. Section 107, any copyrighted work in this message is distributed under fair use without profit or payment to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for nonprofit research and educational purposes only.[Ref. http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml ] Want to be on our lists? 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