NATO Hits China Embassy, Beijing Summons UN Updated 10:51 PM ET May 7, 1999 By Julijana Mojsilovic BELGRADE (Reuters) - NATO warplanes hit the Chinese embassy in Belgrade late Friday and China's official news agency said five people had been injured and three were missing. At the United Nations, China condemned the attack as "barbarian" and called for an emergency United Nations Security Council meeting to condemn the bombing. U.N. officials said the council would meet at 0330 GMT Saturday to consider China's request for the emergency meeting. China's U.N. mission in its initial reaction called on "NATO to stop immediately its military actions so as to avoid further humanitarian disasters." China's deputy representative Shen Guofang, in a statement he read by telephone on behalf of his government and Ambassador Qin Huasun, said: "NATO's barbarian act is a violation of the U.N. Charter." The Yugoslav news agency Beta said that one of the wounded had died. "One employee of the Chinese embassy in Yugoslavia was killed in the overnight strike..." it said. There was no confirmation of the report. Earlier, Yugoslav Minister without Portfolio Goran Matic told reporters outside the embassy that 26 Chinese had been taken to hospital and four had been detained. "They're crazy, those NATO pilots," he said, adding there were 30 people in the building when the blast happened. In Beijing, the official Xinhua news agency said three NATO missiles had hit one embassy building. China, a permanent member of the U.N. Security Council with veto rights, has been strongly opposed to the NATO bombing and has raised it at every occasion in the council, stressing that the entire operation violated the "territorial integrity" of a national state. Beijing also represents Yugoslav interests in the United States since Belgrade broke diplomatic ties with Washington after the beginning of the NATO air strikes on March 24. U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan was "shocked and distressed" that NATO had apparently hit civilian buildings, including a hospital in Nis and the Chinese embassy. He called for an urgent solution to the crisis in the Balkans, his spokesman said. A Chinese diplomat in Belgrade said: "This is a criminal act, they can see this is a completely residential area." Eyewitnesses said NATO might have been targeting the BK TV building 500 meters away. BK TV is owned by Bogoljub Karic, a businessman close to Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic. "That seems to be the only logical target in the area," said one woman on the scene. In Brussels, NATO said it was aware of the reports but could not confirm them. In Washington, National Security Council spokesman Mike Hammer said: "We've just seen the press reports. We're looking into it." "The embassy was hit as four strong detonations were heard," the Beta agency said, giving the time as shortly before midnight. "Explosions were heard in the wider Belgrade region and in New Belgrade." The blasts came after Belgrade was plunged into darkness, with NATO raids ending a three-day pause in bombing of the city. One resident in central Belgrade said smoke was coming from a Yugoslav army building, which had not been hit previously. The Federal Interior Ministry was also reported hit. Belgrade's Studio B television said one building of the army's general headquarters had been hit. It said the Federal Police building had been hit for the third time Friday. Earlier, Yugoslav officials accused NATO of bombing a hospital and an outdoor market in the country's third largest city, Nis, Friday, killing 15 people and wounding 70. NATO said a cluster bomb dropped on an airfield in the southeastern Yugoslav city appeared to have missed its target and had hit a civilian area. "There was no attempt to harm civilians during this strike," a NATO statement in Brussels said. Serbian Deputy Prime Minister Milovan Bojic, visiting Nis, said: "Is it possible that something like this was done only a day after we came closer to a peace agreement?" The major Western powers and Russia -- the Group of Eight (G8) -- Thursday agreed principles of strategy for resolving the Kosovo crisis in their first meeting since NATO began bombing Yugoslavia more than six weeks ago. A senior Yugoslav official reiterated Belgrade's tough stance in the crisis. "We will fight using all means at our disposal for Kosovo to remain part of Yugoslavia," Srdja Bozovic, speaker of the upper house of parliament, told a news conference during a two-day working visit to Ukraine. "We will never agree that Kosovo should became part of another country," he said. "We will not agree that some quasi-states, for example, a kind of Great Albania, should be created from chunks of our land or from somebody else's." Cranking up pressure on Serbian security forces and their supply infrastructure, NATO underlined that a new peace plan for Kosovo agreed by the West and Russia did not herald an end to bombing as long as Belgrade did not accept its terms. NATO insists that hundreds of thousands of ethnic Albanians who have fled Kosovo must be allowed to return with a security presence including NATO to guarantee their safety, and that Belgrade must grant the province wide autonomy. Milosevic has said he will accept only a non-NATO force with defensive sidearms, a stand rejected by NATO because it says returning ethnic Albanians would not feel safe. Underscoring the alliance's determination to pursue its campaign, French Defense Minister Alain Richard was quoted Friday as saying Paris would send an extra 22 aircraft to join the air armada pounding Yugoslavia. Thursday, the G8 foreign ministers called for Yugoslav troops to leave Kosovo and be replaced by an armed international force. U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott is to fly to Moscow next week to start talks on details of a peace plan. A Reuters news team that went to Nis saw three bloody corpses in a street covered with debris. One was of an old woman killed by shrapnel as she carried home carrots from the market. Police said about 20 unexploded cluster bombs were in the area. Reporters were told to keep to the middle of the street. Rod Hay [EMAIL PROTECTED] The History of Economic Thought Archives http://socserv2.mcmaster.ca/~econ/ugcm/3ll3/index.html Batoche Books http://www.abebooks.com/home/BATOCHEBOOKS/ ______________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com
