Chuck Hagel, America's defence secretary, said China's move was a "destabilising attempt to alter the status quo in the region".The decision to respond with an overflight of the B-52s, the Japanese insist, was a joint understanding.
(Russia's state-owned airline Aeroflot, which receives the overflight fees, stands to lose some $300m).
Chuck Hagel, America's defence secretary, says America will oppose any effort to restrict overflight or freedom of navigation.
Responding to what American officials took as evidence that freedom of navigation and overflight was under threat, an American surveillance plane in late May flew close to the expanding islands, with a television-news crew on board.
It is the importance of the freedom of navigation and of overflight that has given America its pretext for louder involvement.
Although Colin Powell, the secretary of state, cobbled together an impressive anti-terrorist alliance, in Afghanistan itself the allied contribution was confined to providing air bases, overflight rights and British and Australian special forces.
In return, America has proclaimed its own "national interest", citing the importance of the freedom of navigation and of overflight.
Because France and Spain both refused overflight privileges to the U.S. aircraft, the planes based in England were forced to fly southwest over the Atlantic Ocean and then east through the Strait of Gibraltar, a detour that added some 2,600 nautical miles to the round trip and required the planes to refuel in flight.
Freedom of the high seas is now recognized to include freedom of navigation, fishing, the laying of submarine cables and pipelines, and overflight of aircraft.
This spring, the Administration will be talking to other countries about the invasion, trying to secure basing and overflight privileges, while Bush builds up a rhetorical case for it by giving speeches about the unacceptability of developing weapons of mass destruction.
When he is sent on an overflight of the site of the vanished villa, Rai unexpectedly falls apart, weeping and shouting Vina's name.
