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US Team in Hainan to Prepare for Dismantling of Spy Plane
A team of four US technicians was on the southern Chinese island of Hainan Friday to make preparations for the dismantling of the US spy plane, the US embassy said.
The team, accompanied by US diplomats, was due to hold talks with Chinese military officials to work out the logistics for dismantling and airlifting the 80-million-dollar EP-3 Aries aircraft out of Lingshui airbase on Hainan.
A US embassy spokesman said there was no firm timetable for the removal of the aircraft. "It is complicated and will take some time," he said.
Pentagon spokesman Craig Quigley said in Washington the plane would be broken into four parts -- the two wings, the fuselage and tail -- and loaded onto probably two Antonov-124s.
He said the Ukrainian-built aircraft, the world's biggest cargo plane, would not be filled to capacity so as to ease the strain on the runway at Lingshui which has been constructed for smaller fighter aircraft.
Quigley experts would work out how many flights the Antonovs would need to transport the EP-3 back to the United States where it will be reassembled and put back in service.
He said a full crew would begin arriving in Hainan in the middle of next week with heavy machinery such as cranes to begin taking the plane apart, and he estimated the whole process could take around a month.
Quigley said the Chinese side would not be involved in the process of taking the aircraft to pieces.
The United States wanted to repair the plane -- which was packed with high-tech electronic surveillance equipment -- and fly it home. However China said it would be an insult to the Chinese people to allow the aircraft to leave under its own power after it had been spying on the country.
The April 1 collision led the Chinese jet to crash into the sea, causing the death of its pilot and presenting the administration of US President George W. Bush with its first foreign-policy crisis.
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