Specialists to
stop here on the
way to spy plane

They will decide how
to take it apart and bring it
back from Hainan Island

From staff and wire reports

A small group of defense contractors were to land in Hawaii today for a brief layover before flying to China's Hainan Island to determine how to disassemble the Navy surveillance plane that landed there April 1.

Lt. Col. Stephen Barger, a spokesman for the Pacific Command, declined to say how many members of the group are military personnel or exactly how long they will be in the islands.

Barger said the group will be on a civilian jet and will be taken to Camp Smith for briefings and other meetings before they leave Hawaii, possibly before the end of the day.

A military official told the Associated Press that five civilian contractors with detailed knowledge of the EP-3E Aries II aircraft will fly to Hainan on a chartered civilian plane. They probably will remain there for at least two days before returning with a detailed assessment of how to recover the EP-3E.

In a subsequent phase of the recovery operation, a different team will be sent to Hainan to disassemble it and ship it off the island, the official said.

The Pentagon originally had said it would consider sending repair parts to Hainan and fly the damaged plane off the island, but that option has been ruled out, apparently at China's insistence.

"I see it as an encouraging sign that they're willing to proceed," Vice President Dick Cheney said yesterday. The plane cannot be flown now and may have to be taken out on a barge, Cheney said. In Beijing, the Chinese government announced that foreign journalists would not be allowed to go to Hainan to report on the inspection of the crippled plane. "We are formally telling you not to go," a Foreign Ministry official, Wei Xing, said in a telephone call to The Associated Press.

Top Bush administration officials reiterated President Bush's tough stand that a military response from the United States remains an option if China attacks Taiwan.

It has been nearly a month since a U.S. Navy EP-3E surveillance plane with a crew of 24 collided with a Chinese fighter jet sent to intercept it over the South China Sea. The plane made an emergency landing at a military airfield on Hainan island on April 1, and the crew was detained for 11 days. They were released after Bush said he was "very sorry" for the loss of the Chinese pilot and for the U.S. plane's unauthorized entry into Chinese airspace to make an emergency landing.

At April 18-19 talks in Beijing, American negotiators presented a written proposal for U.S. experts to inspect the plane to determine whether to repair and fly it out or ship it out in pieces.

"Having completed its investigation and evidence collection involving the U.S. plane and in view of international precedents in handling such issues, the Chinese side has decided to allow the U.S. side to inspect its plane at the Lingshui Airport," the official Xinhua News Agency said Sunday.

Cheney said he was hopeful that China's decision would lay the groundwork for the return of the plane, which was loaded with sophisticated eavesdropping equipment.

"As we've said all along, we do want our aircraft back. And the fact that they have now announced that they're willing to have U.S. personnel go in and look at the aircraft and assess what it's going to take to get it back, I think is very positive," he said on "Fox News Sunday."

The president's chief of staff, Andrew Card, said Washington was preparing to send a team to the island. "We expect them to get there as soon as their documentation is ready, their visas are ready," Card said on ABC's "This Week."

Neither he nor a Pentagon spokeswoman could say who was on the "technical assessment team." They were unsure how swiftly the plane might be returned, or even how it would come back.

Cheney said the aircraft was not airworthy. "The nose is gone from it, all of the instruments don't work, two of the engines are out," he said.