The US ended an 11-day crisis with China today by saying it was "very sorry" a Chinese pilot died in a collision with its spy plane and "very sorry" the US plane landed in China without permission.
The "double sorry" won a promise that the spy plane's 24 crew, detained on China's Hainan island since the collision, would be freed and Washington promptly dispatched a chartered passenger aircraft to pick them up.
It fell short of China's insistent demands for a full apology, although it represented a major retreat by President Bush, who initially offered only "regrets," and did not extract a US admission of responsibility.
"There was nothing to apologize for," Secretary of State Colin Powell said in Paris.
"To apologize would have suggested that we had done something wrong or accepting responsibility for having done something wrong, and we did not do anything wrong and therefore it was not possible to apologize," he said.
Beijing, nevertheless, immediately started telling an angry nation it had won what it set out to win - an apology.
"The firm struggle by the Chinese government and people against US hegemony has forced the US government to change from its initial rude and unreasonable attitude to saying 'very sorry' to the Chinese people," the Communist Party's People's Dailysaid in a commentary.
But there was scorn in the streets of the Chinese capital from people angry the government had let Washington off lightly.
The end to Bush's first major foreign policy crisis followed the delivery of a letter by US Ambassador Joseph Prueher to Chinese Foreign Minister Tang Jiaxuan today.