Xi visits Serbia on 25th anniv of embassy attack

BELGRADE: Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s visit to European ally Serbia on Tuesday falls on a symbolic date: the 25th anniversary of the bombing of the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade during NATO’s air war over Kosovo.

US jets dropped five bombs on the Chinese Embassy compound in the Serbian capital on May 7, 1999, setting it ablaze and killing three Chinese nationals. Twenty other people were injured in the incident, which has burdened relations between the two powers ever since.

The Western military alliance had launched the air war in March that year to force then Serbian strongman Slobodan Milosevic to end a brutal onslaught against ethnic Albanian rebels in Kosovo.

The US at the time apologised and said the embassy bombing was a mistake that happened due to faulty intelligence. The intended target, Washington said, was the headquarters of a Serbian state arms exporter located on the same street, a few blocks away.

“Imagine that somebody would, even by accident, strike an American Embassy somewhere around the world. The reaction would be immediate,” said Sven Biscop, a professor of European foreign and security policy at the Ghent University and Egmont Institute.

“So for a country like China, it is also clear that this is a big thing,” he added.

“And, of course, it has not been forgotten.” Angry protesters in China stormed US diplomatic installations as the bombing fuelled anti-American sentiments and speculation that the attack was intentional rather than accidental. Mistrust over the incident has endured to this day. “We will probably never really conclusively know either way,” Biscop said. “But one thing is sure. In war, incidents like that do happen, and I usually tend to go for the most simple explanation rather than try to invent complicated theories.”