President Bush is sending a letter to the wife of the missing Chinese fighter pilot as a humanitarian gesture, U.S. officials said Sunday.

Ruan Guoqin had written Bush a letter in which she accused him and his administration of being ''too cowardly'' to offer an apology for the collision a week ago between the Chinese jet and a U.S. spy plane.

Ruan wrote that the administration defamed her husband, missing pilot Wang Wei, according to the official Xinhua news agency.

Bush's letter is intended "to respond in a humanitarian way, in an American way, to a widow who is grieving," Secretary of State Colin Powell said.

Powell, speaking on Fox News Sunday, said he had not seen a final draft.

Ruan entered a Beijing hospital Sunday, overcome by stress, according to a Beijing newspaper.

Bush's national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, emphasized that the letter did not represent a shift in the U.S. approach to the impasse.

"The president is taking the high ground here and he is simply responding to the expression of grief, and nothing else," she said on CNN's Late Edition.

"We understand that this probably is the most difficult moment ever in this woman's life," Vice President Dick Cheney said on NBC's Meet the Press.

Two White House officials said the letter would not be released publicly. It had not been sent as of late Sunday morning, but was likely to go out late Sunday or early Monday, they said. It would not include an apology, one official said.

The United States has expressed regrets about the loss of life, but has refused to apologize for the collision between the fighter jet and the spy plane. Powell said that would be the same as accepting responsibility "and that we haven't done, can't do, and therefore won't apologize for that."

(People's Daily 04/09/2001)