Diplomacy

By Jaime A. FlorCruz/Beijing

With diagrams and slides, Under Secretary of State THOMAS PICKERING last week tried to convince Chinese officials that the bombing of their embassy in Belgrade was a mistake. The Chinese were underwhelmed. But what did Pickering tell the Chinese? The U.S. gave no immediate details and was prodded into a hasty backgrounder only after China's notoriously unforthcoming Xinhua News Agency outlined the U.S. positions: the use of maps that did not correctly identify the embassy; a U.S. intelligence officer who breached procedures in mistakenly picking the embassy over the Yugoslav directorate for procurement; outdated databases; aircrews unable to see identifying markers. Xinhua treated claims of procedural errors with disbelief, saying many current maps accurately identify the embassy and that the building and the directorate look nothing alike. Only three U.S. papers were invited to the American briefing, provoking a letter of complaint from other journalists from the Land of the Free.

--By Jaime A. FlorCruz/Beijing