By BARRY SCHWEID
The Associated Press
WASHINGTON - President Bush said Wednesday he looked forward to welcoming home the crew of the U.S. surveillance plane after a delicate diplomatic compromise to end their 11-day detention in China.
But the Navy plane remained in Chinese hands, its future to be taken up at a joint meeting next Wednesday. “The diplomacy continues, the discussions will continue,” a State Department spokesman said.
The EP-3E Aries II, crammed with surveillance equipment, collided with a Chinese fighter jet Sunday and made an emergency landing on Hainan island in southern China. Crew members worked to delete top-secret codes and intelligence before the Chinese came aboard.
China’s acceptance Wednesday of a letter in which the United States said it was “very sorry” the Chinese pilot was lost and the U.S. plane had not sought permission to land, broke the stalemate on the crew’s return. The Chinese had demanded a full apology.
The letter, delivered in Beijing by the U.S. Ambassador, Joseph Prueher, a retired admiral, to Chinese Foreign Minister Tang Jiaxuan, was written in English, which gave Chinese officials some room for their own interpretation.
“We had a situation that could have really scared the relationship,” said Sherman Garnett, dean of James Madison College at MSU. “(The Chinese) came to a smart conclusion, we gave them a letter in English which didn’t say ‘I’m sorry.’ They translated it into Chinese to express responsibility.”
Bush said the American people “are proud of our crew and we look forward to welcoming them home.”
“This has been a difficult situation for both countries,” the president said. “We are working on arrangements to pick them up and bring them home.”
The end to the standoff had relatives of Navy mechanic Nicholas Mellos, one of the 24 crewmembers, rejoicing in Michigan on Wednesday.
“It’s like a new world, a new day,” Mellos’ aunt, Chris Mellos of Northville, told Detroit television station WDIV. “I’m so thrilled.”
“It’s great. I’m very happy,” cousin Aristides Mellos of Detroit said.
Mellos, 46, is a 1973 graduate of Pioneer High School in Ann Arbor, where he grew up the only child of immigrant parents who ran a restaurant. He is a 28-year Navy veteran.
The crew is expected to be on U.S. soil in Hawaii in time for Easter Sunday. There, the Navy men and women will be debriefed.
The spy plane’s future, meanwhile, appeared murky.
“Obviously, the return of the crew has been our number one priority from the beginning of this incident,” said Philip Reeker, a State Department spokesman. “We have also stated repeatedly that we expect the return of our aircraft. But as the letter states fairly clearly, that will be on the agenda at the meeting. The diplomacy continues. The discussions will continue.”
“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, and also we have to make further investigation on the airplane.”
Significantly, perhaps, Shen reiterated the accusation his government had leveled from the outset - that the lumbering spy plane violated Chinese territory.
The Bush administration has rejected the accusation all along, and at Secretary of State Colin Powell’s insistence, the letter accepted by China refers only to the plane’s entering Chinese airspace.
“At this stage I don’t think that we (have) decided yet when to hand over the plane, but we have to make further investigation anyway,” the Chinese diplomat said.
Throughout the negotiations, China demanded an apology. In Paris, for meetings with European and Russian foreign ministers on the restive Balkans, Powell said, “There was nothing to apologize for. We did not do anything wrong, and therefore it was not possible to apologize.”
And, he said, “We entered the airspace without permission because we were unable to get permission. Niceties and formalities were not available to us.”
As for the incident damaging relations, Powell said, “We’ve stopped this process that was unfolding before it became more serious. I don’t see anything that isn’t recoverable.”
On Capitol Hill, Rep. Porter Goss, R-Fla., chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, rejected claims of some conservative activists that detention of the crew and Bush’s statements of regret and sorrow had humiliated the United States.
“This is not a humiliation for the United States,” the former CIA officer said. “If we get our troops back
