U.S., China to dismantle and ship spy plane

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BEIJING — China and the United States have agreed to have a Navy surveillance plane disassembled and shipped home from a Chinese air base where it has been held since a mid-air collision April 1 with a Chinese fighter jet, a Chinese government spokesman said today.

"The U.S. side submitted a proposal to the Chinese side for taking apart the U.S. aircraft to transport it back," Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhu Bangzao said at a news conference. "The Chinese side agreed to that."

Zhu said "technical details" of the transfer remain to be worked out.

He gave no timetable, and wouldn't clarify whether the plane pieces will be flown or shipped back to the United States. The U.S. Embassy in Beijing had no immediate comment.

U.S. technicians concluded the EP-3E surveillance plane could fly home.

China rejected that option, possibly trying to punish Washington for the incident by forcing it to destroy its aircraft in the process of retrieving it.

The collision, which is believed to have killed the Chinese fighter pilot, plunged U.S.-China relations to their lowest level since the NATO bombing of the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade in 1999.

The U.S. plane made an emergency landing at a Chinese air base on Hainan Island in the South China Sea following the collision.

Its 24 crew members were held for 11 days.