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CNN Sunday Morning

China Continues to Insist on Full Apology From U.S.

Aired April 08, 2001 - 10:03   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
BRIAN NELSON, CNN ANCHOR: In the standoff between the United States and China over a Navy spy plane and its crew, the Chinese are continuing to insist on a full apology from the U.S. No new diplomatic meetings have been scheduled and no new visits with the Navy air crew have been granted as of yet.

For the Bush administration, though, the watch-word is guarded optimism that the standoff can be resolved soon.

That having been said, though, there must be growing frustration inside the White House. CNN's Major Garrett joins us now to report on what is happening there, and Major, I think you're going to report to us that President Bush has sent a letter to the widow of the Chinese fighter involved in the collision with the American plane and who had called President Bush cowardly.

Any idea what the response the president is sending to the widow?

MAJOR GARRETT, CNN SENIOR WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Well, Brian, let's go over a couple of the facts as we know them, some late breaking developments obtained by CNN.

First and foremost, the president of the United States will in a letter personally respond to that letter sent to him by the presumed widow of the Chinese fighter pilot. That fighter pilot, of course, missing and presumed dead. And in fact, that widow did accuse the president of the United States of acting in a cowardly way.

White House press secretary Ari Fleischer confirming to CNN that the president will, he has not yet, but he will send a letter offering his regrets, and the White House is describing that letter as a humanitarian gesture unrelated to the ongoing negotiations to obtain the release of those 24 crew members of that surveillance plane.

Another development worth sharing; the White House has confirmed that in the last meeting between U.S. diplomats and the air crew, only eight members of the air crew were allowed to see the U.S. diplomatic team, not all 24. That was at the request of the Chinese government.

The White House says that the eight were representative of the 24 officers in that there were some junior officers and some senior officers of that crew, but not all 24 were seen.

And, in comments today, Vice President Cheney and Secretary of State of Colin Powell made it very clear that though they are glad negotiations are continuing, this must be brought to a swift conclusion.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DICK CHENEY, VICE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: It's important to recognize that every day that goes by without resolution of this does lead to the possible risk of lasting damage, if you will, to the relationship between the United States and China. That's not in our interest and it's not in their interest.

COLIN POWELL, U.S. SECRETARY OF STATE: The relationship is being damaged. The damage can be undone. But in order for the damage to be undone and no further damage to occur, we've got to bring this matter to a close as soon as possible.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

GARRETT: That is a nuance change in the administrations point of view about the progress of the negotiations and exactly how much this situation will effect future relations between the United States and China.

On Friday and through yesterday we were reporting general optimism. But now, with two very important voices from this administration saying, in the case of Secretary Powell, the relationship is being damaged. And Vice President Cheney warning that damage could result if this isn't brought to a swift conclusion.

Clearly, the administration is trying to adhere to that diplomatic line, but also sending very strong signals to the Chinese government that this cannot go on very much longer. Brian?

NELSON: Major, is it fair to say the administration is beginning now to lose some patience?

GARRETT: Well, I think those comments can be fairly interpreted as a signal, as I just said, that the administration has tried its very best to respond to all the various diplomatic request short of the ultimate request, which will not be met, which is an apology from the United States government for the midair collision that set this entire standoff in motion.

And clearly, the administration knows that as this incident, which they prefer to call it, enters its second week, more and more Americans may view those 24 service personnel as full-blown hostages and they may begin to think of this as a crisis. Clearly, the administration doesn't want to have to deal with a hostage crisis, so it wants to end this quickly and is sending signals to the Chinese government that if it doesn't, relations will be damaged -- Brian.

NELSON: Major, a question on another subject. Tomorrow, as you know, the administration is going to take the wraps off the Bush budget. Do you have any new details for us as we head into tomorrow?

GARRETT: Well, a couple of details are worth pointing out, generally speaking. The release of the budget tomorrow is different from what all of our viewers have been hearing about the last two weeks, which is the blueprint, the very broad outline of the Bush budget.

Tomorrow, we're going to see very thick books that will have line by line by line what this White House believes Congress should spend on every federal program. There will be some cuts in there. There will be programs and departments that take a hit, because the president wants to keep spending at 4 percent on an annual growth here in Washington.

Some programs will grow, but some will be cut, and the interesting tactical decision the White House made is they wanted that very important vote last week in the Senate on the president's outline to occur before any of the senators saw the hard details because they feared if they saw some of the details, the votes might even be harder to get. That's why they're releasing the budget tomorrow -- Brian.

NELSON: Alright, thanks to CNN's Major Garrett at the White House.

And as we said, at this time tomorrow morning the White House will release the details of President Bush's budget plan. If the devil is in the details, let's try to anticipate some of them with our guest. He's Abraham McLaughlin, a White House correspondent for "The Christian Science Monitor."

Mr. McLaughlin, thank you for being with us. What do you expect to see in that budget tomorrow? Who is going to be a winner and who is going to be a loser?

ABRAHAM MCLAUGHLIN "THE CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR": Well, that'll be the key question. I mean, at 8:00 tomorrow, round two of the budget debate and battle begins and the thing that we'll start to see is the battle of two different messages. The one from Bush will be the broad-themed, big vision message, and that's that he's increasing spending by 4 percent. As he says, that's $100 billion, which is more than the U.S. spent on the Marshall Plan in Europe after World War II. So, he will go big.

The Democrats will go small, and then we'll start combing through all those line items that Major talked about and point out that Bush plans to cut aid to children's hospitals and that sort of thing.

The question will be whether the Democrats can connect with anything along the lines of school lunches, which is what Newt Gingrich, in 1994, got in trouble over, and took a lot of political heat over. So, if they can find some little thing that is very popular, Bush will be in trouble.

NELSON: Do you think President Bush is able to make his budget projections without some rather painful people cuts, as we call them?

MCLAUGHLIN: He'll have to do, I mean, he, last year the budget was increased by 8 percent and he wants to keep it to 4 percent, so there are going to be cuts. He's looking at, he's going to cut Clinton's program to hire 100,000 new cops. There are some people there who won't potentially be hired. He's going to cut a program to connect poor people with health care. And so, there will be some tough decisions, but Bush is going to make the case that he's still increasing by 4 percent and that he's reducing a lot of repetitive programs and he will try to do what he can do.

NELSON: How much of it do you think will survive Congress? Again, you alluded to it a moment ago. Are the Democrats up to making some major changes to the Bush budget?

MCLAUGHLIN: Well, they'll certainly try. In this era of surpluses, they want to spend a lot and it's amazing that Bush has been able to, over the past year, redefine the whole tax cut and budget debate in Washington, that even in this era of surpluses they're not talking about increasing spending very much. So...

NELSON: Well, he does nothing, according to some people, to insure the solvency of Medicare and social security. Is that going to be a problem for the president, very quickly, as, if that turns out to be true tomorrow morning?

MCLAUGHLIN: Social security and Medicare are hugely popular programs and he can't afford to look like he's cutting these big, popular programs in the era of surpluses.

NELSON: Alright. Thank you very much. Abraham McLaughlin, White House correspondent for "The Christian Science Monitor."

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