NATO Says It Mistook Embassy for Arms Depot

BRUSSELS — Amid profuse apologies from NATO leaders and a convulsion of outrage in China, shaken alliance officials admitted Saturday that they were unsure how their aircraft managed to strike the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade--an apparent error that ranks among the most serious mistakes of the 6 1/2-week air campaign over Yugoslavia.

The embassy was hit in an apparent case of mistaken identity. NATO planners said they believed the building was a munitions storage facility; Chinese journalists said the embassy has occupied the building for about two years.

Privately, officials were blaming faulty intelligence for the error.

As NATO military analysts launched an urgent investigation into the incident--and alliance officials vowed no letup in the air campaign--its political leaders worked to defuse a potential diplomatic disaster.

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization “wishes to express its deep regret for the tragic mistake of the bombing of the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade,” a visibly upset Secretary-General Javier Solana told reporters during a morning press briefing at NATO headquarters here.

“The sincere sympathy and the condolences of all the countries, of all the members of the alliance, go to the victims, to their families and the Chinese government,” he said.

President Clinton, who was touring tornado-damaged communities in Oklahoma, used almost identical language as he offered “regrets and condolences to the leaders and people of China.”

“It was a tragic mistake,” Clinton said.

In Washington, Pentagon spokesman Kenneth H. Bacon confirmed that the weapons that struck the embassy were either laser- or satellite-guided, but he suggested there was no indication that the weapons or their guidance systems malfunctioned.

“The building was hit in error,” he said. “We did not target the Chinese Embassy.”

Bacon indicated that definitive answers will come only when the investigation is complete. “And at the appropriate time, when the review is complete, NATO will give an explanation,” he said.

The State Department said the U.S. government had delivered a formal apology to Beijing through the U.S. ambassador to China, James R. Sasser.

“We wish to express our sincere condolences and remorse to the Chinese people and government,” State Department spokesman James P. Rubin said in a statement.

“We look forward to continuing to work with China on matters of mutual and global concern, including resolution of the situation in Kosovo,” he added.

Chinese Report 3 Dead, 20 Injured

The bombing killed three people and injured 20, several of them seriously, according to the official New China News Agency. The attack occurred shortly after midnight Friday.

Chinese journalists identified the dead as Xinhu Xu, a correspondent for the Guangming Daily; his wife, Yin Zhu; and Yunhuan Shao, a correspondent for the official New China News Agency.

Yugoslav and Chinese journalists also reported 20 people wounded, five badly enough to be hospitalized. Yugoslavia’s state-owned news agency Tanjug said the Chinese military attache suffered chest wounds. At the time of the bombing, Yugoslav officials said, about 30 people were in the compound, which contains living quarters for embassy personnel and their families.

The modern five-story embassy building stands alone on its own grounds, making it relatively easy to define as a target. It is flanked on three sides by broad open spaces of tall grass and on the fourth side by a wide, tree-lined avenue, Ulica Tresnjinog Cveta (Cherry Tree Street).

About 400 yards from the embassy, the Hotel Jugoslavia was also bombed late Friday. One person, an elderly Croatian refugee, was killed there.

News of the attack on the embassy touched off a firestorm of protest and indignation in China and some bitter rhetoric in Moscow.

Thousands of Chinese students marched on the U.S. Embassy in Beijing, shouting and throwing eggs and garbage. They waved signs and hand-lettered placards with such messages as “USA Go to Hell” and the word “NATO” coupled with a Nazi swastika. Students shouted, “Down with U.S. imperialism,” “Pay debts in blood” and “Down with U.S. running dogs.” The protests resumed today.

Although less intense, Russia’s reaction was strong.

“It is not just aggression, it is barbaric,” said Viktor S. Chernomyrdin, Russia’s special envoy for Kosovo, the disputed province of Yugoslavia’s dominant republic, Serbia. “How can you continue negotiations parallel to this?”

The former Russian premier has been actively trying to broker a diplomatic settlement to end the conflict over Kosovo that both NATO and Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic would accept.

Moscow reflected its disapproval of the bombing by canceling a planned visit by Foreign Minister Igor S. Ivanov to Britain, but Chernomyrdin went ahead with a planned trip to Bonn to continue efforts to negotiate an end to the war.

“You can’t call it [the bombing] anything but a defiant provocation,” Ivanov said. “Although the NATO representatives are now being apologetic and explain this as a mistake, it is hardly believable. Three missiles were directed at the embassy from different sides.”

At the United Nations in New York, an emergency meeting of the Security Council called by Beijing ended just before dawn Saturday. China called the attack a “crime of war,” and Russian Ambassador Sergei V. Lavrov denounced the bombing as “unconscionable.”

In the face of withering verbal attack, U.N. representatives from the U.S. and other NATO countries, including Britain and France, could do little but repeatedly express their regret for the bombing.

For the NATO allies, the timing of the embassy bombing could not have been worse. After weeks of delicate negotiations, the U.S. and other major alliance countries only Thursday managed to win Russia’s agreement to a vaguely worded set of principles to end the conflict.

That agreement seemed to open the door to possible action by the U.N. Security Council, but analysts believe it will now be much harder for the U.S. to push for the tough settlement conditions it wants. Both China and Russia have veto power in the Security Council.

In other developments Saturday, the 46th day of the NATO air campaign:

* Alliance jets blasted a railway station near Kraljevo in central Serbia and struck the main highway between Belgrade and Yugoslavia’s third-largest city, Nis. Other strikes hit a bridge in downtown Nis and targets in Kragujevac, injuring 13 people, according to Yugoslav officials.

* A massive influx of refugees from the Pec region of southwestern Kosovo began arriving on foot and by tractor at the Albanian border after being attacked by Serbian forces. The arrival of at least 5,000 refugees brought the total number of Kosovo refugees in Albania to more than 412,000. Many of the refugees arriving Saturday, who had been living in nearby hills for as long as a month, reported that the Serbs pulled out many men of fighting age and executed them, according to the Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees. Among the arrivals were 180 people coming from Montenegro--refugees who had already fled Kosovo and were seeking safety a second time.

* A moderate Albanian Kosovo leader, Fehmi Agani, died while in the custody of Serbian police, according to the German Foreign Ministry, which demanded an inquiry into the death. Family members said Serbian police forced Agani off a train headed for Macedonia three days ago. Agani and his family were fleeing Kosovo when the train was turned back at the border by Serbian authorities. He was taken off the train by police while his wife and son were allowed to go on, relatives said. Agani, 66, a sociology professor, was a founding member of the Democratic League of Kosovo, the foremost political party in the province, and a leading figure in negotiations earlier this year in France aimed at resolving the crisis in Kosovo.

* In a poll taken before the Chinese Embassy was hit, Newsweek found public support waning for at least one dimension of the Kosovo conflict. Approval for sending ground forces into Kosovo dropped from 50% to 43% during the past week, the magazine said.

In Belgrade, the Chinese Embassy building was left with gaping holes on the ground floor and most of its green-tinted windows blown out. A large section of the ground floor on the front and back of the building was gutted. A smaller annex at the back, which appeared to be residences, also was severely damaged.

At one end of the building, all the granite facing slabs had been stripped from the wall, baring the raw concrete underneath. A basketball backboard and several cars parked in front of the building were wrecked.

The only parts of the building that appeared to have escaped damage were two satellite dishes, two ornamental Chinese-style roof sections in green ceramic tiles topped with dragon’s heads, and the Chinese flag that fluttered in the front.

The accident occurred on the heaviest night of the bombing campaign, one on which NATO officials claimed that their pilots hit a number of key targets. However, at least some of the targets, including the Defense Ministry buildings, had been hit before and were long since evacuated.

NATO Says Hotel Used as Paramilitary Center

NATO said it bombed the massive, nine-story Hotel Jugoslavia because the Serbian nationalist leader Zeljko Raznjatovic, known as Arkan, was using it as a command center for paramilitary operations in Kosovo.

The hotel’s lobby, nearly empty of guests for days because of electricity and water shortages caused by NATO strikes on power plants, was heavily damaged, and an annex next door was burned out.

Arkan, part owner of the hotel’s casino, was recently indicted by the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia in The Hague in connection with “ethnic cleansing” by his Tigers paramilitary group during the 1992-95 war in Bosnia-Herzegovina.

He denied using the hotel as a base. “I don’t even have an office here,” Arkan told reporters outside the damaged building. “Is it possible they hit the hotel just because of me? Am I so important?

“They didn’t hit even one Tiger,” he said. “The Tigers are all alive. They’re waiting for NATO to invade us on the ground.”

Rubin reported from Brussels, Marshall from Washington and Boudreaux from Belgrade. Times staff writers Janet Wilson at the United Nations and Richard C. Paddock in Moscow also contributed to this report.

* RELIEF WORKERS STRESSED: Aid workers at camps in Albania struggle with bureaucracy and bouts of loneliness. A10