Advertisement - Click to support our sponsors.

Two Chinese
warships to visit
Pearl Harbor

Tensions have eased since
the bombing of China's
embassy in Belgrade

---

By Gregg K. Kakesako
Star-Bulletin

Two Chinese warships will visit Pearl Harbor for three days early next month as tensions with Beijing ease since the bombing of a Chinese embassy in Belgrade last year.

The Navy said the Chinese guided-missile destroyer Quingdao and the oiler Taicang will dock here Sept. 5 and leave for Seattle Sept. 8 for a three-day stopover at Everett Naval Station beginning Sept. 15.

During the Pearl Harbor and Seattle visits, the Chinese and U.S. sailors will be able to visit each other's ships.

The two Chinese vessels also will be open for limited public tours.

The last time Beijing allowed a U.S. port visit by Chinese warships was in 1997, when two destroyers and one oiler docked at Pearl Harbor and San Diego. Earlier this month, the 7th fleet Aegis cruiser USS Chancellorville spent three days visiting the port city of Qingdao, the first U.S. warship to visit mainland China since 1998.

The Navy has made nine port calls on mainland China since Beijing opened its doors in the 1980s. Four of them have been to Qingdao.

The Chancellorville, based in Yokosuka, and its crew of 350 visited historic sites in Beijing and Qingdao, a Yellow Sea city 600 miles west of Seoul. While in China sailors from the Chancellorville spent a night in Beijing, visited the Great Wall of China, the Forbidden City and Tiananmen Square.

The Chancellorville`s visit was part of the U.S. effort to repair the relations with China, as announced by Defense Secretary William Cohen in China last month.

Adm. Thomas Fargo, Pacific Fleet commander, also was in Beijing meeting Chinese leaders and hosted a reception on the Chancellorville last week. For nearly six months last summer, the Chinese stopped port calls for U.S. vessels to Hong Kong following the bombing of the Chinese embassy in May 1999 by allied bombers.

The U.S. said it was an accident, caused by a reliance on outdated Belgrade maps. Some Chinese leaders disagree. Three people were killed and 27 injured.

The last U.S. warship to visit mainland China was the frigate USS Vandegrift in December 1998. That visit was to Shanghai.

The May 1999 bombing of the Chinese embassy in Yugoslavia during the Kosovo air war also cut off the arms control talks with China.

That dialogue reopened in Beijing last month and was resumed in Hawaii this week. China opposes the U.S. plan to develop a theater missile defense program to protect its troops in Asia and its allies because it sees the missile defense system as a protection for Taiwan.