The official was responding to media reports that quoted Taiwan's Aviation Safety Council director Kay Yong as saying the council has requested Washington to provide radar and satellite data to help pinpoint the black boxes and wreckage of the Boeing 747-200.

Yong reportedly said he was also seeking the help of the mainland authorities to piece together the final moments of the doomed Flight CI 611.

"We have taken notice of what he said from media reports but have not got any formal request from the Taiwan side so far," said the official with the Taiwan Affairs Office of the State Council.

But the official, who declined to be identified, said Beijing may seriously consider it once Taipei formally requests radar and satellite images from the mainland.

"Although our department cannot provide such data, we will try our best to seek co-operation from related organizations to get some information that is deemed necessary for probing the air tragedy," he said.

Also on Wednesday, Zhang Mingqing, spokesman for the office, said "As long as Taiwan makes the requests, we are willing to offer any kind of assistance." It was reported that with only radar data from a plane above 30,000 feet in air and just 0.1 per cent of the wreckage retrieved, it has been very difficult to piece together the cause of the deadly crash.

The information recorded near sea-level is needed to better track the fall of the debris and locate the wreckage.

The Hong Kong-bound Boeing 747-200 which plunged into the Taiwan Straits, killing 225 people on board, is believed to have broken up in mid-air.

By Thursday, Fujian fishermen had helped recover six bodies and handed them over to the Taiwan side.

Meanwhile, two salvage ships sent by the Maritime Rescue Centre under the Ministry of Communications recovered a total of 21 pieces of wreckage of the plane.

Also by Thursday, about ninety bodies have been recovered as the recovery work entered the sixth day.

A Taiwanese salvage team worked to recover bodies and the "black boxes" Thursday from a piece of wreckage from the CAL jet.

Investigators hope that the chunk of wreckage north of Taiwan's outlying Penghu island chain will offer clues to why the plane went down 20 minutes after taking off from Taipei.

Finding bodies remained the top priority, "transportation minister" Lin Ling-shan said Thursday. "If there are people in there, we want to get them out," he said.

Next, divers want to recover the black boxes, or the voice-and-flight data recorders, which might also help explain why the plane suddenly disappeared from radar screens, Lin said.

The pilots did not send distress signals or indicate in other ways that the Boeing 747-200 was in trouble before it broke up above 9,000 metres in the sky.

The wreckage and black boxes were believed to be 37 kilometres (23 miles) north of Penghu's northernmost island and submerged in 60 metres (about 200 feet) of water, officials said.

( May 31, 2002)