Speaking at a public meeting on `External military intervention to address human rights violations' at the YMCA on Tuesday, Vanaik said NATO is playing into the hands of Milosevic. Chinese Consul General Haung Quan Heng, British Deputy High Commissioner Michael Bates were the other two panelists at the meet organised jointly by the YMCA and India Centre for Human Rights and Law.The Chinese consul general criticised NATO's bombing of the Chinese embassy in Yugoslavia, terming it `a challenge to Chinese sovereignty' and `a serious provocative act to world peace.' Thanking the Indian government for condemning the air strikes, he declared that it is impossible to achieve any political solution unlessthe attacks stopped. He further said China stands for resolving international differences through peaceful means.

Turning to the Chinese diplomat, Bates admitted that the embassy building had been wrongly identified. ``It was an accident,'' he said,`` I repeat, an accident.'' On the general situation in Yugoslavia, Bates asserted, ``The full facts of this tragic conflict are not receiving enough media coverage. Hardly any of the footage we see is filmed in Kosovo itself. Serbs show you the damage they want to show you.'' There was a danger of the Kosovar Albanians being overlooked in all this, he said.

Describing the Yugoslav landscape as one witnessing scenes not seen since the second World War, he justified NATO attacks stating, ``No decent country will stand by and watch this violence.''

Regarding the Security Council's sanction for NATO's intervention, Bates insisted that the issue had been debated in the Council on March 24 where 12 to 3 votes were in favour.

Giving a broader perspective to theissue of intervention, Vanaik cited several instances where far more lives than those in Kosovo were at stake but the power-brokers chose to remain silent, if not actively support `anti-humanitarian' acts. Hypocrisy is evident, he said, in Indian policy too, like in India's insistence that Christian persecution was a matter to be solved internally.

Replying to Bates's argument on NATO's `humanitarian' intervention, Vanaik said, the NATO was only protecting its own interests. Moreover, NATO's air-strikes, he said, far from wiping Milosevic's ``racial genocide'', had instead strengthened Serb resolve.