Work begins to return spy plane

The EP-3 spy plane has been stranded since April

A six-member American team has started work to dismantle and ship home the damaged spy plane which has been stranded on a Chinese military base since it collided with a Chinese jet in April.

The EP-3 plane is to be loaded onto two Russian cargo aircraft and flown from Hainan island in the South China Sea to a United States air base on the Japanese island of Okinawa.

A lengthy stand-off ensued after the mid-air collision in which a Chinese pilot died.

Work to load the parts onto the two Russian Antonov 124s is expected to take nearly a month.

Diplomatic row

Spokesmen for the US Embassy in Beijing and the Chinese Foreign Ministry said they had no information on the progress of the dismantling work.

The Russian Antonov is one of the world's largest cargo planes

China rejected a US proposal to repair the plane and fly it home, apparently hoping to punish Washington for the incident by forcing it to destroy its aircraft in order to retrieve it.

The mid-air collision caused a serious diplomatic row between the two countries.

China held the 24-member crew of the US spy plane for 11 days before allowing them to return home. The impasse ended only after Washington said it was "very sorry" that the Chinese pilot had died and the American plane had landed without permission.

Lockheed Martin, the US plane's builder, is handling the dismantling. The US Navy said Lockheed is paying a Chinese contractor, HNA Hotel, $75,724 for rental vehicles, equipment storage and other services on Hainan.

A Russian company, Polyot Air Cargo Ltd. of Voronezh, has won the contract to return the dismantled plane. The Navy did not say how much it was paying Polyot.