[119144] in Cypherpunks
Why NATO bombed the chink embassy
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Anonymous)
Sun Oct 17 13:52:22 1999
Date: Sun, 17 Oct 1999 19:31:36 +0200 (CEST)
Message-Id: <199910171731.TAA16116@sofuku.monster.org>
From: Anonymous <nobody@replay.com>
To: cypherpunks@algebra.com
Reply-To: Anonymous <nobody@replay.com>
Sunday October 17 5:14 AM ET
Britain Denies Chinese Embassy Bombed
Deliberately
LONDON (Reuters) - Britain Sunday denied a report that NATO deliberately
bombed the Chinese embassy in Belgrade after the Western alliance
discovered the
mission was being used to transmit Yugoslav military communications.
Britain's Observer newspaper quoted an unnamed intelligence officer as saying
``NATO had been hunting the radio transmitters in Belgrade,'' including
one at
President Slobodan Milosevic's house, during its air war against Yugoslavia.
``When the president's residence was bombed on 23 April, the signals
disappeared
for 24 hours,'' said the NATO officer, who monitored Yugoslav broadcasts from
neighboring Macedonia.
``When they came back on the air again, we discovered they came from the
(Chinese) embassy compound.''
British Foreign Secretary Robin Cook said there was no truth in The
Observer's
story.
``I know not a single shred of evidence to support this rather wild
story,'' he told
BBC television interviewer Sir David Frost.
``The United States have been through their records exhaustively, in
detail. They
have done a full presentation to China and also to their allies.
``It was a tragic mistake. It was an error that should never have
happened,'' he
added.
An official at NATO headquarters in Brussels also denied the report but it
is likely
to rekindle diplomatic tensions on the eve of a visit by Chinese President
Jiang
Zemin to alliance hawk Britain this week.
Diplomatic Chasm
The three cruise missiles that hit the mission on May 7 killed three
Chinese and
opened a diplomatic chasm between NATO and Beijing, which holds one of five
permanent seats on the U.N. Security Council.
Senior U.S. and NATO officials blamed the attack on a targeting error
caused by
outdated maps.
That explanation brought incredulity from Chinese leaders and the bombing
sparked
three days of government-backed protests against the U.S. and British
embassies in
Beijing.
The Observer said it had been told by a NATO flight control officer in
Naples that
the Chinese mission was correctly located on a map of ``non-targets.''
The Chinese embassy had been removed from the list after NATO electronic
intelligence detected it was rebroadcasting Yugoslav Army communications
to units
in the field.
The Observer speculated the Chinese might have helped Milosevic as a means of
gaining access to radar-evading technology aboard a U.S. F-117 Stealth bomber
that went down in Yugoslavia in the first few days of NATO's air campaign.
``The Chinese were also suspected of monitoring the cruise missile attacks on
Belgrade, with a view to developing effective countermeasures against U.S.
missiles,'' it said.
The NATO official in Brussels said of the Observer story, written in
cooperation
with Denmark's Politiken newspaper, ``as far as I know is not true.''
