On the Right - The Remaining Questions.(Brief Article)(Column)

NEW YORK, APRIL 13

On the matter of the settlement, a few questions:

1. When do we renew our surveillance flights? If reports are to be believed, these flights have been going up "several" times per week. That is a lot more often than the U-2 flights over Russia back in 1960, which resulted in the raucous summit in Paris, the withdrawal of an invitation to President Eisenhower to go to Moscow, and a big page in the history of the Cold War. If we are doing surveillance flights in southeast China, why so intensively? What is it we are on to? Is what we are discovering there something that justifiably requires intensive monitoring?

2. If these flights are necessary for U.S. interests in Southeast Asia, what are we prepared to do to continue them? What is China prepared to do to obstruct them? Have we put down the (regrettable? sorrowful?) end of the Chinese fighter plane as the just deserts of cowboy highflying?; or, have we concluded that the pilot who went down was acting on Chinese orders to obstruct the passage of our EP-3? If a) the Chinese are determined to obstruct the flights, and b) the United States is determined to continue the flights, how do we propose to do this? Are we intending fighter protection for our next flights? Will we be sorry, or very, very sorry, if our fighter plane knocks down a Chinese fighter plane?

3. Is it possible that we have developed the technology to get the information we need through satellite surveillance? This was what happened in 1960 when we phased out the U-2s. The Soviets having achieved anti- aircraft technology of their own, we went to our Peeping Toms. Do we have Peeping Toms that will do what we want done in southeast China? If so, is it understood in Peking that we are going to end the surveillance flights, relying on satellite flights? If so, are the Chinese going to spread the word that they have effectively stopped our flights, giving Peking an enormous psychological lift?

4. How come military specialists who have focused on the events of the past fortnight haven't told us what exactly it is that we are looking at in southeast China? We have been told that the Chinese are stepping up their submarine building, and we know that that can be harrowing news. In the 1980s, the Soviets ...