* No response from China to U.S. flight
* Vice President Biden visiting region next week
* Islands at heart of China territorial dispute with Japan
(Adds analyst comments, paragraphs 9-10)
By Phil Stewart and David Alexander
WASHINGTON, Nov 26 (Reuters) – Two unarmed U.S. B-52 bombers
on a training mission flew over disputed islands in the East
China Sea without informing Beijing, defying China’s declaration
of a new airspace defense zone and raising the stakes in a
territorial standoff.
The flight did not prompt a response from China, the
Pentagon said, and the White House urged Beijing on Tuesday to
resolve its dispute with Japan over the islands diplomatically,
without resorting to “threats or inflammatory language.”
China published coordinates for an East China Sea Air
Defense Identification Zone over the weekend and warned it would
take “defensive emergency measures” against aircraft that failed
to identify themselves properly in the airspace.
The zone covers the skies over islands at the heart of a
territorial dispute that China has with close U.S. ally Japan.
“The policy announced by the Chinese over the weekend is
unnecessarily inflammatory,” White House spokesman Josh Earnest
told reporters in California, where President Barack Obama is
traveling.
“These are the kinds of differences that should not be
addressed with threats or inflammatory language, but rather can
and should be resolved diplomatically,” he said.
Two U.S. B-52 bombers carried out the flight, part of a
long-planned exercise, on Monday night EST, a U.S. military
official said.
The lumbering bombers appeared to send a message that the
United States was not trying to hide its intentions and showed
that China, so far at least, was unable or unwilling to defend
the zone.
Beijing may have been caught off-guard and could change its
approach down the road, said Dean Cheng, an analyst at the
conservative Heritage Foundation think tank.
“The Chinese may not have expected such a strong American
reaction so soon,” Cheng said. “The fact that Washington
responded and responded so strongly sends a very clear challenge
back to Beijing saying: ‘Look, in case you were wondering, we
are serious when we say we are an ally of Japan. And do not mess
with that.'”
The B-52s, which have been part of the Air Force fleet for
more than half a century, are relatively slow compared with
today’s fighter jets and far easier to spot than stealth
aircraft.
“We have conducted operations in the area of the Senkakus.
We have continued to follow our normal procedures, which include
not filing flight plans, not radioing ahead and not registering
our frequencies,” spokesman Colonel Steve Warren said, using the
Japanese name for the islands.
The dispute flared before a trip to the region by Vice
President Joe Biden, who is scheduled to travel to Japan early
next week and also has stops in China and South Korea. The White
House announced the trip in early November.
The East China Sea dispute will figure prominently on
Biden’s agenda.
‘DESTABILIZING’
While Washington does not take a position on the sovereignty
of the islands, it recognizes that Japan has administrative
control over them and is therefore bound by treaty to defend
Japan in the event of an armed conflict.
The Pentagon said the training exercise “involved two
aircraft flying from Guam and returning to Guam.” Warren said
the U.S. military aircraft were neither observed nor contacted
by Chinese aircraft.
The United States and Japan have sharply criticized China’s
airspace declaration, with U.S. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel
calling it a “destabilizing attempt to alter the status quo in
the region.” He said on Saturday the United States would not
change how it operated there.
The Chinese move was believed to be aimed at chipping away
at Tokyo’s claim to administrative control over the area,
including the tiny uninhabited islands known as the Diaoyu in
China.
Japan’s two biggest airlines – Japan Airlines and
ANA Holdings – bowed to a Japanese government request
to stop complying with the Chinese demands for flight plans and
other information. They will stop providing the information on
Wednesday, spokesmen for the carriers said.
China’s Defense Ministry said it had lodged protests with
the U.S. and Japanese embassies in Beijing over the criticism
from Washington and Tokyo of the zone.
China also summoned Japan’s ambassador, warning Tokyo to
“stop words and actions which create friction and harm regional
stability,” China’s Foreign Ministry said. Tokyo and Seoul
summoned Chinese diplomats to protest.
In addition, China sent its sole aircraft carrier on a
training mission into the South China Sea on Tuesday amid
maritime disputes with the Philippines and other neighbors and
tension over its airspace defense zone.
It was the first time the carrier was sent to the South
China Sea.
(Additional reporting by Jeff Mason in California, Matt
Spetalnick and Lesley Wroughton in Washington, Tim Kelly in
Tokyo, Lincoln Feast in Sydney,; Ben Blanchard in Beijing; Megha
Rajagopalan, and Manny Mogato in Manila; Editing by Alistair
Bell and Peter Cooney)
