United States bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade

On May 7, 1999, during the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia (Operation Allied Force), five U.S. Joint Direct Attack Munition guided bombs hit the People's Republic of China embassy in Belgrade, killing three Chinese journalists and outraging the Chinese public. According to the U.S. government, the intention had been to bomb the nearby Yugoslav Federal Directorate for Supply and Procurement (FDSP). President Bill Clinton apologized for the bombing, stating it was an accident. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) Director George Tenet testified before a congressional committee that the bombing was the only one in the campaign organized and directed by his agency, and that the CIA had identified the wrong coordinates for a Yugoslav military target on the same street. The Chinese government issued a statement on the day of the bombing, stating that it was a "barbarian act". In October 1999, five months after the bombing, The Observer of London along with Politiken of Copenhagen, published the results of an investigation citing anonymous sources which said that the bombing had actually been deliberate as the Embassy was being used to transmit Yugoslav army communications. The governments of both the U.S. and the U.K. emphatically denied it was deliberate, with U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright calling the story "balderdash" and British Foreign Secretary Robin Cook saying there was "not a single shred of evidence" to support it. In April 2000, The New York Times published the results of its own investigation for which, "the investigation produced no evidence that the bombing of the embassy had been a deliberate act." Right after the bombing, most Chinese believed it was deliberate, and many continue to believe that it was deliberate. On the other hand, according to structured interviews conducted in 2002 of the 57% of Chinese relations experts who believed that the bombing was deliberate, 87.5% did not suspect President Clinton's involvement. In August 1999, the United States agreed to compensate the victims of the bombing and their families. In December 1999, the United States agreed to pay China for the damage to the embassy, and China agreed to compensate the United States for damage to U.S. property that occurred during the resulting demonstrations in China. In May 2000, a major U.S.-China trade bill passed the United States House of Representatives which became the United States–China Relations Act of 2000 integrating with China's entry into the World Trade Organization. By June 2000, during a visit to China by U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, both sides said that relations between them had improved.