U.S. presses China to release spy plane, crew.(Chicago Tribune)

WASHINGTON--Two dozen crewmembers of a U.S. Navy spy plane were in Chinese hands after a collision with a Chinese fighter plane forced an emergency landing Sunday, touching off a possible foreign policy crisis for the new Bush administration.

Amid fingerpointing by both sides, the United States pressed Beijing to release the 24 crewmen, who landed at a Chinese military base on an island south of Hong Kong. The single-seat Chinese fighter jet crashed into the South China Sea and Chinese rescuers still were looking for the downed pilot Monday local time.

With arrangements for the return of the American crew uncertain, a second critical concern emerged for the United States: making sure that no Chinese officials board the super-secret EP-3 Aries II electronic eavesdropping aircraft. China could learn a great deal about U.S. intelligence-gathering capabilities, and about its own vulnerabilities to spying, from the computers and sensors aboard the plane.

The pilot of the U.S. spy plane was able to report back to base just after landing that no American servicemen were killed or injured in the incident, which the Pentagon said occurred over international waters. After that there was no more contact. An American diplomat was en route Monday morning to the base where the plane landed.

Within hours of the collision, a war of words was developing, with Beijing claiming the U.S. plane was approaching Chinese airspace and veered into its fighter. The Pentagon accused China of ignoring U.S. complaints about increasingly aggressive flying tactics by Chinese fighter pilots in recent months.

The collision comes at a time of increasing Chinese-U.S. tension as the Bush administration considers expanded military aid to Taiwan, which Beijing regards as a renegade province. It also comes two years after U.S. warplanes inadvertently bombed the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade, Yugoslavia, during the NATO-led Kosovo air campaign, causing a deep chill in relations between Washington and Beijing for more than a year.

The four-engine, propeller-driven EP-3 was conducting what U.S. military officials called a routine patrol 81 miles southeast of China's Hainan Island. The plane was intercepting Chinese military communications and signals, according to U.S. officials who spoke on condition of anonymity.