BEIJING, Jun 17, 1999 -- (Reuters) China rejected on Thursday U.S. envoy Thomas Pickering's explanation of a series of intelligence blunders that led to NATO bombing Beijing's embassy in Belgrade.
"The Chinese side refuted this report and so far the explanations by the U.S. side are not convincing," Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Zhang Qiyue said in a statement.
She repeated a demand for punishment of those responsible for the May 7 bombing, which killed three Chinese journalists and sparked nationwide anti-U.S. protests, and said Beijing wanted compensation.
Foreign Minister Tang Jiaxuan on Wednesday rebuffed Pickering's explanation of an attack which the Chinese state media have said repeatedly was deliberate.
On Thursday, the official Xinhua published an account of the meeting. It said Pickering admitted there were three basic errors which led to the embassy becoming a target in NATO's air war against Yugoslavia.
The intended target was a Yugoslav military procurement office, but two Yugoslav and one American map misplaced the Chinese embassy, it quoted Pickering as saying.
U.S. military databases had not been updated with the mission's location and the target review system failed to turn up the error, he said.
Pickering stopped short of promising punishment,
Xinhua said, but did not rule it out.
He said the Central Intelligence Agency and U.S. Department of Defense were still interviewing people involved and "it will be determined whether any disciplinary action will be taken".
Xinhua also detailed China's rebuttal.
It said China believed it was "impossible" for NATO not to know where Beijing's mission was and that the precision with which the embassy was destroyed proved "the U.S. side had a very detailed knowledge of the building structure".
China has specifically linked its willingness to resume negotiations on its entry to the World Trade Organization to the outcome of Pickering's mission.
It broke off WTO talks, and froze military exchanges and a human rights dialogue, after the bombing.
Analysts were divided on whether the rebuff of Pickering's explanation dealt a fatal blow to China's chance of entering the WTO this year, which U.S.
President Bill Clinton said was his aim.
Failure to gain membership before a new global round of trade talks begins in November could mean a delay to Chinese membership of several years.
Pickering, in a statement before heading back to Washington, gave no insight into his meetings, but he said: "We look forward to further productive discussions with China in the mutual interests of the two countries."
But Xinhua's story of Pickering's meetings was broadly in line with an account offered by a State Department official responsible for China to selected U.S. reporters.
"It may be in the end that we have to essentially agree to disagree," the U.S. official was quoted as saying. But, the United States was "hopeful that after a period of time, we will get back more or less to normal relations with China".
The White House on Thursday said it hoped Beijing would eventually understand the bombing was an accident.
"It's our hope that once China has had a chance to review and absorb the information that they'll understand that this was a tragic accident," White House spokesman Joe Lockhart, in Paris with Clinton, said.
Zhang said the ball was in the U.S. court.
"It is up to the one who ties the knot to untie it. Whoever started the trouble should end it," the spokeswoman said.
"The Chinese government has always attached importance to the development of Sino-U.S. ties," Zhang said. "But principles must be topmost in developments in relations, especially on principles of respect for sovereignty and territorial integrity."
The embassy bombing sparked three days of violent protests outside the U.S. and British missions in Beijing. Tens of thousands of demonstrators took to the streets of other major cities. The U.S. consul's residence in Chengdu was torched.
Diplomats had predicted Beijing would reject any explanation of the bombing as an error, partly because public opinion would not allow it.
However, one Western diplomat said China's rebuff to Pickering did not necessarily mean that ties with the United States would remain in the deep freeze.
"They don't want the relationship to fall to bits, that's been clear from what's being said," the diplomat said.
Since the bombing, state media have been demonizing the United States as an international bully.
But in recent days, articles have argued that despite Washington's "hegemonism", China should pursue a policy of cooperation because it was in Beijing's best interests. ((c) 1999 Reuters)