China plane crew rewarded for foiling attackers

Chinese officials said internationally-backed separatistsseeking an independent Xinjiang, the largely Muslim region inthe northwest, were behind the failed March 7 attack.

The plane cut short its journey from Xinjiang to Beijingand landed in the northwestern city of Lanzhou.

China's aviation regulator, the General Administration ofCivil Aviation (CAAC), said the crew had successfully foiled anattack of "malicious political intentions ... organised byinternationally backed terrorists," in a report posted on itsWeb site (www.caac.gov.cn) on Tuesday.

Officials have not provided a detailed account of theincident. But sources later told Reuters that the chiefsuspects -- a man and a woman -- boarded the flight carryingPakistani passports and drink cans that contained flammableliquids.

The woman, who had been born in Xinjiang but spent manyyears in Pakistan, failed to light the liquid in the planetoilet, and aroused the suspicion of crew and other passengerswhen she came out of the toilet to pick up the second can, onesource said.

Xinjiang is home to 8 million Muslim Uighurs, many of whomresent the growing presence and economic grip of the Han ethnicmajority. The oil-rich region borders Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Exiled Uighurs campaigning for an independent country havesaid China concocted the plane incident to justify heavycontrols on Uighurs.

Xinjiang officials said the suspects had confessed toplanning an attack. An aviation source last week told Reutersthat a third suspect, a Pakistani, an apparent mastermind ofthe plan, was still at large.

The region's Communist Party Secretary Wang Lequan toldofficials to be on guard against "separatist" threats,Xinjiang's official news Web site (www.tianshannet.com)reported on Wednesday.

A senior Chinese official said recently that extremistUighurs -- a Turkic people who share linguistic and culturalbonds with central Asia -- were plotting attacks on the BeijingOlympics.

China's ethnic tensions have come into focus in the wake ofrioting in Tibetan areas following several days of peacefulprotest in the regional capital Lhasa earlier this month.

(Reporting by Ian Ransom and Chris Buckley; Editing by KenWills and Sanjeev Miglani)