China, US to Continue Negotiations on Plane Collision IncidentChina and the US will continue negotiations on the April 1 plane collision incident and other related issues starting from April 18, Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Zhang Qiyue said Thursday at a press conference.Zhang said negotiations will include such topics as the cause for the collision, the stop of US reconnaissance activities near the Chinese coastal areas, and the prevention of recurrence of such incidents, and other related issues. Zhang stressed that the US spy plane had intruded into China's airspace and caused the crash of a Chinese fighter jet and the loss of the Chinese pilot. "This case has not concluded," Zhang said, demanding the US to provide convincing explanations to the Chinese people, to stop sending aircraft to the vicinity of China's coast for reconnaissance activities and take effective measures to prevent the recurrence of such incidents. Incident Not Fully Settled, JiangPresident Jiang Zemin said Wednesday in Montevideo that the US-China spy plane incident is not yet over and Washington should handle it properly.In an interview with Xinhua, Jiang said that the US government has sent a letter to the Chinese side to say "very sorry" for the incident of a US military reconnaissance plane ramming into and destroying a Chinese military aircraft. "Yet the incident has not been fully settled," he stressed. "We hope that the US side will adopt a serious attitude toward China's standpoint on the incident and handle it properly." "The development of Sino-US ties should be based on the three joint Sino-US communiques and the basic norms governing international relations. Only in this way can bilateral problems be properly solved," Jiang added. |
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