The mid-air collision which precipitated the ongoing US-China impasse occurred after a Chinese fighter started to fly directly under the US EP-3 spy plane and was hit when the latter banked to the left, Pentagon officials told journalists yesterday.
The new version of how the collision happened, though still unofficial, may provide an important bridge between US and Chinese descriptions of the event and give diplomats room to manoeuvre in the extensive discussions now going on between the two sides.
On the fifth day of the impasse, the Chinese ambassador to the US visited the State Department for the fourth time and Chinese sources spoke of "close contacts" following Wednesday's US expression of "regret" over the incident. "A step in the right direction", they reiterated.
The White House yesterday acknowledged the increased intensity of dialogue. "The governments are heavily engaged," President Bush's spokesman, Mr Ari Fleischer, said. "There are a variety of contacts under way". Asked about the question of an apology, Mr Fleischer said: "The US position remains unchanged". He also made clear that the White House was not objecting to visits to China by congressional delegations that had been previously planned.
Pressed on the effects of the standoff on future relations, Mr Fleischer insisted that Mr Bush was "going to take one step at a time". He refused, however, to confirm the reports emanating from the Pentagon about how the accident occurred, arguing that "the best way to ascertain information is to talk to the crew" but acknowledging that the US also had other unspecified sources of information.
US sources also yesterday said that they knew the missing Chinese pilot, 32-year-old Mr Wang Wei, who had been photographed on a number of occasions while "buzzing" other US spy planes. If it is clear that the Chinese plane, although flying dangerously close to the EP-3, did not cut across its path, a diplomatic formulation, although falling short of a US apology, may be easier to come by.
Until now the US has insisted that the EP-3 was flying on a straight course while the Chinese accused the US pilot of veering suddenly across the course of their fighter.
While the tone of the White House has remained calm, sabres are being rattled elsewhere here. In Congress there were warnings that unless the dispute is resolved fast the "Chinese will begin to pay a price", in the words of Representative Mark Kirk, a Republican from Illinois who is a naval reservist and has flown similar missions.
Others warned that the continued detentions could endanger the resumption of normal trade relations as part of the agreement that is supposed to bring Chinese membership of the World Trade Organisation. And there has been more talk of blocking China's cherished bid for Olympics 2008.
Speculation in a Japanese newspaper that Mr Bush might send his father to China to mediate is not taken seriously here. Although the former president is very much an old China hand, the message sent by such a move of the son's dependence on his father is not exactly the image the Bush administration wants to project.
Meanwhile, papers released by the National Security Archive reflecting past incidents with the Chinese show that following the Chinese shooting down of a spy plane in 1969 the US contemplated using fighters based in Taiwan to protect such flights.