Diplomatic efforts to reach a settlement of the Kosovo crisis, which last week made substantial progress by including Russia and the United Nations, have taken a nosedive with NATO's bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade. It would be difficult to think of a politically less appropriate or more incompetent mistake to have made. But the effort to find a diplomatic settlement endorsed by the UN must be persevered with, especially since NATO's unilateral bombing campaign against Serbia has become so much less credible after this incident.
There can be no mistaking official and popular Chinese fury over the attack. It is plainly visible in the demonstrations and marches in many cities and draws on a simmering feeling of resentment at other perceived slights to Chinese pride in its dealing with the United States - on trade, human rights and political issues. The very popularity and xenophobia of the demonstrations underline dangers for the Chinese leadership, in that they could be broadened out to take in other matters, including social and political discontents as the tenth anniversary of the Tiananmen Square demonstrations approaches.
The leadership faces an acute dilemma over whether to ride with popular feeling or rein it in. The affair also plays to divisions within the leadership on the general policy of opening up to the West economically and politically.
It had been widely assumed that China's desire to consolidate that policy under the leadership of President Ziang Zemin and the Prime Minister, Mr Zho Rhongji would provide some leverage when it came to convincing it not to veto a Security Council resolution on Kosovo. Once the Russians have agreed to it, as promised by last week's initiative from the Group of Eight industrialised countries, this would be all the easier to achieve, given that China rarely exercises its veto except when its national interests are clearly and specifically threatened. Even if the Chinese leadership is still minded to go along with such an approach, it will be all the more difficult politically now for it to do so. It is a sharp and brutal reminder that worldwide factors are involved in the Kosovo crisis as well as European ones. Part of the explanation for China's response must be resentment at the idea that NATO, the West or the US seek to assert hegemony and a unilateral right of intervention after the end of the Cold War.
This has been a longstanding policy matter for the Chinese; but it is echoed in European and Russian opinion. Hence the increasing demands that such interventions must be sanctioned globally through the United Nations, despite the difficulties posed by the principle of national sovereignty built into its structures.
The Kosovo crisis has been sparked by the emergent principle of humanitarian rights which - rightly - should take precedence over those of national sovereignty. If that requires finding ways to reform UN decision-making procedures, so be it. That is by far the better way of proceeding, rather than asserting NATO's right to intervene based on dubious interpretation of UN resolutions. China and Russia will have to be centrally involved in this endeavour. The search for a diplomatic settlement in Kosovo therefore confronts a deeper need to bring the UN into line with changes in the international system, no matter how difficult that appears to be.