1999: Chinese anger at embassy bombing

Major cities in China have seen their biggest and angriest demonstrations for years in response to the destruction by Nato bombs of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade with the loss of four lives.

Hundreds of students chanting anti-American and anti-Nato slogans marched in Shanghai, Chengdu, Guanghzou.

In Beijing about 100,000 people invaded the embassy district, massing on streets littered with rocks and broken bottles from earlier protests.

Buses packed with students headed out of campuses across the city. Correspondents said the authorities appeared to be deliberately encouraging the action.

The residence of the US Consul General in the south-western city of Chengdu was stormed and partially burned.

Nato said its pilots hit the embassy in the early hours of 8 May with precision-guided bombs by accident - they had mistaken the embassy for a legitimate military target.

Condemnation

The Chinese press has carried front-page pictures of the victims of the embassy bombing.

At an emergency session of the UN Security Council, the Chinese ambassador accused Nato of carrying out a war crime.

The Russian President, Boris Yeltsin, condemned the bombing as a violation of international law and called for an immediate end to the air strikes on Serbia.

Serbian state television reported that Yugoslavia's President Slobodan Milosevic has conveyed his deepest sympathy to China over the deaths.

President Clinton has offered deep regrets to the people of China, but said the bombing was an accident, not a barbaric act.

He echoed the words of the Nato Secretary-General, Javier Solana, in saying that the incident would not deter the alliance from continuing its air campaign.

As Nato countries try to contain the damage from the embassy bombing, Russia's special Balkans envoy, Viktor Chernomyrdin, said that the conflict itself must be resolved by political means as quickly as possible.

He was speaking after talks in Bonn with the German Chancellor, Gerhard Schr�der, about the G8 countries' outline peace plan for Kosovo.

Both the chancellor and Mr Chernomyrdin later held separate talks with the Kosovo Albanian leader, Ibrahim Rugova.

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