American diplomats flew Monday to an island in the South China Sea where a US Navy surveillance plane landed after a collision with a Chinese fighter jet, acording to new agencies.
A military attache and a consular officer from the US Consulate in the southern Chinese city of Guangzhou were on Hainan and making their way to the airfield, said a US military spokesman, Army Lt. Col. Stephen Barger.
``We have still not been able to establish communication and liase with the crew,'' Barger said by telephone from Hawaii. He refused to say whether the crew was supposed to destroy their sophisticated equipment to keep it from falling into foreign hands.
The US plane was standing empty at the airport where it landed in the town of Lingshui, said a sailor contacted there by telephone. The crew has been moved to a military guesthouse, said the sailor, who refused to give his name, said the Reuter report.
A salvage ship sent from the Chinese mainland has joined a military search for the Chinese F-8 fighter, which Beijing says crashed after the collision, according to a Hainan provincial maritime official.
Chinese officials say the pilot is missing. ``They have not found anything,'' said the maritime official, who would give only his surname, Wang.
US Embassy officials in Beijing wouldn't say whether their diplomats expected to meet with the EP-3's crew.
The unarmed propeller-driven plane took off from the US Kadena Air Base in Okinawa, Japan. Its crew is made up of 22 Navy personnel, one Air Force officer and one Marine.
The EP-3 is about the size of a Boeing 737 commercial jetliner and carries equipment capable of monitoring radio, radar, telephone, e-mail and fax traffic, according to defense experts.
(China Daily 04/02/2001)
