Over the weekend senior U.S. officials, including Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, hurriedly made condolence calls to their Chinese counterparts. “It was a tragic mistake,” Clinton said. But the president also defiantly rejected Beijing’s savage criticism of the NATO strike as “barbaric,” and he denied it was a setback for peace. “What is barbaric is what Mr. Milosevic is doing,” Clinton said. Most U.S. officials expressed confidence that Beijing would still back a U.N. resolution on Kosovo if Moscow does. Still, some of them suggested there might be a diplomatic price to pay; Beijing, for instance, might drive a tougher bargain in its bid to join the World Trade Organization. “They’re going to hit us hard,” warned James Lilley, the former U.S. envoy to Beijing. “They’re going to use this the way we’ve used Tiananmen.”
