The United States has not handled well the on-going flight collision case with China, an influential US newspaper said, rapping Washington's arrogance in trying hard to shirk its responsibility for the spy plane incident.

The Los Angeles Times, in a by-line article published recently, also implied that the Bush administration should apologize for the April 1 incident that caused a Chinese pilot missing.

On April 1, a US spy plane rammed and damaged a Chinese jet fighter near China's Hainan Island, causing it to crash. Later, the US plane landed at an airport on Hainan island without permission.

The Los Angeles Times criticized the arrogance Washington has shown as it tried hard to exempt itself from the responsibility for the recent flight collision over the South China Sea, and consistently rejected a formal apology to Beijing.

"They all seem to think that being the 'lone superpower' means never having to say they are sorry, forgetting that President Eisenhower did apologize for the flight of Francis Gary Powers over Russia and ended U-2 flights," the newspaper said.

The United States "looks absurd" when talking about its airplane having something called "sovereign immune status" and claiming that China is being "inconsistent with standard diplomatic practice," the newspaper said.

"It is understandable that the Chinese are suspicious," the newspaper said, citing as reasons the demonization of China in the so-called Cox committee report on spying, the harassment of scientist Wen Ho Lee, the 1999 bombing of the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade and the Taiwan lobby's attempt to obtain Aegis ship defense systems.

The Chinese people do not accept Washington's claim of a "right of espionage," which the United States regards as routine exercising, because they know that the US military itself does not tolerate close surveillance of American territory, the newspaper said.

"What's at issue in the spy plane incident is whether the US is interested in being a decent citizen of the world or whether it is merely a bully," the Los Angeles Times emphasized.

The newspaper warned that in a post-Cold War world, the United States "will find itself very much alone in its Asian adventurism."

For instance, it said, the Japanese government quickly declared that the fact the US spy plane involved in the collision came from the Kadena Air Force Base in Okinawa in no way alters Japan's own relations with China.

(Xinhua 04/11/2001)