After a third day of mass street protests near the US embassy in Beijing, China demanded an official apology from NATO for bombing its Belgrade embassy and severe punishment for those responsible.
Last night President Clinton publicly apologised for NATO's action, which killed three Chinese citizens, but insisted the air campaign would continue.
"I apologise, I regret this," he said in the White House, but "I think it is very important to draw a clear distinction between a tragic mistake and a deliberate act of ethnic cleansing."
The apology falls short of what Chinese Foreign Minister Mr Tang Jiaxuan called for when he summoned the US ambassador, Mr James Sasser, yesterday to make four demands on "US-led NATO". These were an open and official apology to the Chinese government and people and relatives of the victims, severe punishment for those responsible, a complete investigation and a public announcement of the results.
On Friday Mr Clinton sent a letter of apology to President Jiang Zemin of China, who has reportedly refused to accept a telephone call from the White House. In his first comments on the Belgrade bombing yesterday, President Jiang attacked NATO's "absolute gunboat policy".
He told President Yeltsin of Russia by telephone that continued NATO bombing would make it "impossible for the UN Security Council to discuss any plan to solve the problem", according to the Chinese news agency, Xinhua. China is a permanent member of the UN Security Council and its support is vital.
Mr Yeltsin sent the former prime minister Mr Viktor Chernomyrdin to Beijing for urgent talks with President Jiang and Vice Prime Minister Mr Qian Qichen on a joint approach to the Balkans crisis.
Earlier yesterday Beijing suspended military exchanges and human rights dialogue with Washington in retaliation for what has been portrayed in China as a deliberate attack on its sovereignty. The EU Trade Commissioner, Sir Leon Brittan, announced that an EUChina summit in Beijing this week had also become a casualty of the crisis.
Sir Leon, the German Chancellor, Mr Schroder, and the acting EU Commission President, Mr Jacques Santer, had been due to meet China's leaders on Thursday to discuss Beijing's WTO membership. Mr Schroder will still make the trip but it has been downgraded to a working visit. The US State Department and the British government have advised their nationals not to travel to China in the present climate - a major blow to the tourist and hotel industry.
Chinese shares fell on Asian stock markets on fears of a foreign withdrawal of capital. A steady flow of demonstrators paraded around the embassy district yesterday but their numbers were down on Sunday, when the American embassy began shredding sensitive documents in case the building was overwhelmed. Stone-throwing was sporadic and discouraged by police as the day went on.
The diplomatic district was saturated with hundreds of steel-helmeted riot police, forming a corridor for students carrying effigies of Mr Clinton with slogans such as "Pornographic Pig!". Early this morning small crowds of demonstrators wandered through the streets outside a diplomatic apartment block shouting "Foreigners go home!"
A Chinese military attache initially reported killed in the bombing is still alive, Chinese media reported. Beijing newspapers, which dismissed NATO assertions that it had made a mistake as "whitewash", showed the corpses of the three people killed laid out in a morgue, with the father of one of the victims sobbing.
The Taoiseach, Mr Ahern, yesterday expressed "his profound sympathy" on behalf of the Government to the Chinese government "on the tragic deaths of four staff in the Chinese embassy in Belgrade due to NATO bombing". While welcoming steps taken to safeguard Irish embassy staff, Mr Ahern said the Government's concerns had been conveyed "at the highest level" to the Chinese government on the safety of Irish nationals in China.