BEIJING—U.S. toy giant Mattel issued an extraordinary apology to China on Friday over the recall of Chinese-made toys, saying most of the items were defective because of Mattel’s design flaws rather than faulty manufacturing.

The company added that it had recalled more lead-tainted Chinese toys than was justified.

The gesture by Thomas A. Debrowski, Mattel’s executive vice president for worldwide operations, came in a meeting with Chinese product safety chief Li Changjiang, at which Li upbraided the company for maintaining weak safety controls.

“Our reputation has been damaged lately by these recalls,” Debrowski told Li in a meeting at Li’s office.

“And Mattel takes full responsibility for these recalls and apologizes personally to you, the Chinese people, and all of our customers who received the toys,” Debrowski said.

Mattel ordered three high-profile recalls this summer of millions of Chinese-made toys including Barbie doll accessories and toy cars because of concerns about lead paint and tiny magnets that could be swallowed.

The “vast majority of those products that were recalled were the result of a design flaw in Mattel’s design, not through a manufacturing flaw in China’s manufacturers,” Debrowski said.

Lead-tainted toys accounted for only a small percentage of all toys recalled, he said, adding that: “We understand and appreciate deeply the issues that this has caused for the reputation of Chinese manufacturers.”

In a statement issued by the company, Mattel said its lead-related recalls were “overly inclusive, including toys that may not have had lead in paint in excess of the U.S. standards.

“The follow-up inspections also confirmed that part of the recalled toys complied with the U.S. standards,” the statement said.

Li reminded Debrowski that “a large part of your annual profit … comes from your factories in China.

“This shows that our cooperation is in the interests of Mattel and both parties should value our cooperation. I really hope that Mattel can learn lessons and gain experience from these incidents,” Li said, adding that Mattel should “improve their control measures.”

Since this summer’s recall, Mattel has announced plans to upgrade its safety system by certifying suppliers and increasing the frequency of random, unannounced inspections. It has fired several manufacturers.

Tests had found that lead levels in paint in recalled toys were as high as 110,000 parts per million, or nearly 200 times higher than the accepted safety ceiling of 600 parts per million.

China has become a center for the world’s toy-making industry, exporting US$7.5 billion worth of toys last year.

Eighty-eight people died, many of them European tourists, when a budget airliner carrying 130 passengers and crew crash-landed in bad weather at Phuket airport in Thailand yesterday. At least eight British holidaymakers were among the 42 survivors, many of whom were hospitalised with burns. A hospital official said at least five of the survivors were seriously hurt.

The deputy governor of Phuket island, Worapot Ratthaseema, said the dead included Irish, Israeli, Australian and British passengers. It was not immediately clear how many foreigners died, he said. An Airports of Thailand spokeswoman, Monrudee Gettuphan, said 78 foreigners had been on board.

Passengers described how they scrambled over burning bodies in the panic to get out of the cabin. The McDonnell Douglas MD-82, operated by the Thai airline One-Two-Go, was on a scheduled 80-minute trip from Bangkok to the holiday resort. It came down in heavy rain and cross winds, skidded on the runway, broke in two and burst into flames. Chaisak Angsuwan, director general of the Thai air transport authority, said: the weather played a part in the crash. “The visibility was poor as the pilot attempted to land. He decided to make a go-around, but the plane lost balance and crashed,”

A slightly burned passenger, Parinwit Chusaeng, told the national television channel TITV: “I saw passengers engulfed in fire as I stepped over them on the way out of the plane. I was afraid the plane was going to explode, so I ran away.”

Other survivors and witnesses confirmed the pilot’s difficulty in landing. An Irishman named Sean, who was being treated for burns to his arms, legs and back, said it was clear there was a problem before the attempt to land. “You could tell there was a problem. The plane was flying around trying to land.”

Nong Khaonual, a Thai who survived the crash with his wife, said he believed the plane had descended too quickly. “The airplane was landing in heavy rain. It landed too fast. I have never seen anything like this. It descended very fast. Just before we touched the runway we felt the plane try to lift up and it skidded off the runway,” he said. “My wife was half conscious and I dragged her out of the emergency exit. There was a man behind us and he was on fire.”

A witness on the ground, William Harding, said: “What it looked like to me was that it actually landed and then crashed, maybe skidded off the runway. The inside was totally on fire and [after] about five minutes there was a small explosion that blew off the top of the plane.”

Jikarat Wongtawan, a worker at the Bangkok Phuket hospital, said 32 passengers were being treated there, 24 of them foreigners. They included eight Britons, five Germans, five Iranians, two Israelis and at least one Australian, Irish and Canadian. Other injured foreigners were taken to the Phuket International hospital.

The Foreign Office in London said last night that the British ambassador to Thailand was on his way to the resort. The resort describes itself as “Asia’s most popular beach destination”.

Udom Tantiprasongchai, managing director of Orient Thai Airlines which owns One-Two-Go Airlines, told TITV: “This is the first accident in more than a decade that we have been operating and we are shocked.” The crash is the country’s deadliest aviation accident since December 1998, when 101 people were killed after a Thai Airways jet crashed while trying to land in heavy rain at Surat Thani, 330 miles south of Bangkok. Forty-five people survived.

The jury in the Phil Spector trial has still not reached a verdict despite new instructions from the judge aimed at ending the deadlock.

Deliberations resumed yesterday following a two-day hiatus after the panel said it was split 7-5 over a verdict, without saying which way it was leaning.

The Los Angeles superior court judge Larry Fidler refused to declare a mistrial after seven days of deliberations in the six-month trial.

The 67-year-old music producer faces a sentence of 15 years to life in jail if he is convicted of murdering the actress Lana Clarkson by shooting her through the mouth at his Los Angeles home in February 2003.

Judge Fidler withdrew a jury instruction yesterday saying that for them to find Mr Spector guilty the prosecution must have proven beyond a reasonable doubt that he pointed a gun at Ms Clarkson and that the gun ended up inside her mouth while in his hand.

Instead, he told the jury that they could consider a range of possible scenarios and still find Mr Spector guilty, including one that suggested Ms Clarkson had the gun in her hand at the time of her death.

The defence has argued that the 40-year-old actress, who was working as a nightclub hostess when she met Mr Spector, was depressed over her career and finances and shot herself in the mouth, either deliberately or by accident.

Prosecutors said during the trial that even if the gun went off mistakenly, Mr Spector could be convicted of murder because his actions showed a conscious disregard for human life.

Mr Spector, who did not testify in his defence, is famous for pioneering the “wall of sound” recording technique in the 1960s and for his work with The Beatles, The Ronettes, Tina Turner and Cher.