Joseph Wilson Prueher (born November 25, 1942) is a retired admiral of the United States Navy who was United States Ambassador to the People's Republic of China from 1999 to 2001. He was succeeded as ambassador by Clark T. Randt Jr. (wikipedia)
The Chinese so far have given us no explanation for holding the crew.
We are very eager to do that so we can reassure their families. ... those are the norms of international law, and as time goes by that gets to be a worse and worse situation.
I think it's a time for rhetoric to be very measured and constructive, and not be rhetoric that does not lead toward solutions, ... I think it's a time to proceed very cautiously and thoughtfully, and a time for creative solutions.
There is little doubt that they have been over the airplane ... We are sure that the crew is not on the airplane, and we have every reason to think that the Chinese have been all over the airplane, ... Good Morning America.
We are working on meetings, our communication is getting better and both our governments are working pretty hard to solve this.
It's part of the past that we have between us now. We can't get away from that piece of it. So what we're hopeful of doing is perhaps using this first anniversary of it as a point from which to move forward.
What is hard for us to understand well, and hard for me to explain to Secretary (of State Colin) Powell, is the inability to get a phone call through to the aircraft commander or to talk to the crew.
We've got some people on the way down there tomorrow. And we'll continue to work hard both here and in Washington. And it appears also the Chinese have lost an aircraft and we're sorry that occurred.
I think we'll be busy with it for the next day or so. We're trying to get it sorted out.
The air crew is well. ... (We're) hoping to get them out of here before too long,
