Asian media lament NATO attack on Chinese embassy

Asian media lament NATO attack on Chinese embassy

SINGAPORE (Reuters): Leading Asian newspapers voiced regret on Sunday at NATO's missile attack on China's embassy in Belgrade with Japanese dailies urging the U.S.-led alliance to consider ending its air strikes on Yugoslavia.

Major Japanese papers ran pictures of a bloodied Chinese embassy worker being helped by a Yugoslavian fireman on their front pages and the daily Mainichi Shimbun said a turning point in the Yugoslavia crisis had been reached.

"The time has come to make a decision about ending the air campaign," read an editorial.

NATO strikes have continued to affect Yugoslavia's civilian population but have failed to reverse the ethnic cleansing in Kosovo, it continued.

Keizo Obuchi, Japan's prime minister, said on Saturday that the attack was "truly regrettable".

"I express my condolences for the victims and hope for a peaceful resolution as soon as possible," Obuchi told reporters.

Three Chinese were killed in the attack and a score injured.

The daily Asahi Shimbun also said last Friday's missile attack, which NATO says was a "tragic mistake", should make the alliance reconsider its strategy.

"It has been 50 days since the air campaign started. It has come to a state where the appropriate officials should reevaluate the air campaign."

Hong Kong's South China Morning Post said NATO's actions had hurt its cause but refrained from the diatribe of its mainland neighbors which called the embassy attack a deliberate act of aggression against China.

"There may have been a more effective way for NATO to damage its own cause than by striking the Chinese embassy in Belgrade...but it is difficult to imagine what," the Post said in an editorial.

Hong Kong's Ming Pao Daily News and the pro-Beijing Wen Wei Po were more critical.

"NATO's atrocities cannot be condoned. We most strongly protest against NATO's warcrimes," Wen Wei Po said.

Taiwan media gave top coverage to the bombing, concentrating on the near-rioting it sparked in Beijing and many other Chinese cities and the role the country's state-controlled press were playing in fanning these disturbances.

"If mainland authorities aren't careful, these sentiments could ultimately end up turning against them," Taipei's China Post said in an editorial.

Beijing has said it opposed NATO's military response to Belgrade's "ethnic cleansing" of Kosovo's ethnic Albanian population for fear such a strategy then could be justified to help separatists counter China in Taiwan or Tibet.

Pakistan's Foreign Ministry said the embassy bombing underscored the need for the United Nations to get more involved in the Yugoslavia crisis.

On Saturday, India's foreign minister deplored the NATO bombing and said the UN must take the lead in the conflict.

"This is certainly time for the United Nations now to assert itself. NATO cannot become or pretend to become a global gendarme," Foreign Minister Jaswant Singh told Reuters.

Manila expressed regret for the loss of life in the bombing and also weighed in with calls for a greater role for the United Nations.

"We believe that this is a matter for the United Nations Security Council to discuss," the Philippine presidential spokesman said in a statement to Reuters on Sunday.

Striking a more ominous note, veteran Philippine columnist Maximo Soliven pondered possible further Russian and Chinese reactions to the attack.

"Are we close to the brink than we believe?...If the NATO and the West miscalculate, there may be hell to pay."

"Obviously we regret the bombing and the loss of life.