US should bear full responsibility and apologise for the collision between Chinese and US military planes to resolve the international incident

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Media Statement
by Lim Kit Siang 

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Two  matters stand out in the four-day standoff between China and the United States:
 

• No denial or pretence from the United States that they were not spying on China but the US outrage that according to satellite images, the Chinese authorities had boarded the  US Navy spy plane which made an emergency landing on Hainan Island “working on the airplane, taking a wrench to it, fooling around with it, examining it, tinkering with it”.
• The US claim that the spy-plane is sovereign US territory - as if the Chinese had to apply for tourist visas  before they could visit the EP-3.

The claim by the US  Commander in Chief of the US Pacific Command, Admiral Dennis Blair that while the US “physically cannot prevent the Chinese from boarding the plane", the spy-plane is protected by the “concept of sovereign immunity" is most ludicrous, a reflection of US super-power arrogance and must be rejected by all sovereign nations.

China has every right to examine the US  spy-plane now that it is on its territory.

The assertion of the US ambassador to China, Joseph Prueher, that China had no legal basis to hold the crew is also untenable.

The onus is now on President George W. Bush to end the international diplomatic incident with a fulsome apology for the US spy-plane’s incursion into Chinese air space and collision with a Chinese jet to resolve the diplomatic row without  harming long-term bilateral relations between the two countries and international peace.

(5/4/2001)