WASHINGTON -- China admitted publicly for the first time that it shot down a U.S. plane during the Vietnam war and gave the administration proof that two Navy pilots missing since 1967 had died as a result, officials said Wednesday.
State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said Chinese officials in Hawaii told an American team investigating servicemen still missing from the Vietnam war that their troops had shot down a Navy plane that 'inadvertently entered' their airspace Aug. 21, 1967.
The aircraft was on a mission over North Vietnam, he said.
And the Chinese gave American officials irrefutable proof during the meeting three weeks ago that the two Navy pilots had died in the incident, Boucher said.
'The Chinese handed over photos of the bodies of the two pilots and photos of their I.D. cards,' he said. 'The photos clearly show both pilots to be dead.'
A pentagon spokeswoman, Air Force Capt. Susan Strednansky, said it was not the Pentagon's policy to release names of sericemen and women killed in combat without relative's authorization.
Boucher said the fate of eight more U.S. fliers who went down over China during the war has still not been determined, but they are believed to be dead.
Boucher praised the cooperation from the hard-line communist nation, which Washington has condemned in the past for human rights abuses and unfair trade practices.
'The U.S. government appreciates the assistance of the Chinese government in this humanitarian endeavor,' Boucher said. 'This assistance reflects a new level of cooperation between our two countries on accounting for missing servicemen.'
On a related matter, Boucher said Vietnamese officials during recent meetings at the United Nations in New York told the administration that they did not keep any American prisoners after the Vietnam War.
President Clinton's special advisor on Americans still missing since the war will ask Vietnamese officials in Hanoi this weekend for an explanation of a recently uncovered memorandum in which it is disclosed that officials in 1972 lied about the number of American prisoners in detention camps.
Then-Army Deputy Chief of Staff Gen. Tran Van Quang told communist officials in his memorandum that North Vietnam detained 1,205 servicemen. Shortly thereafter, Hanoi released 591 POWs and said no more remained.
