EVEN if error is a grimly inevitable factor that infiltrates virtually every military conflict, the deadly NATO bomb that destroyed the Chinese embassy in Belgrade remains a monumental blunder that may yet unleash endless tragedy for those this war is all about.

For the fact that this bomb was deliberately targeted at the wrong building - something that the lowliest intelligence official in NATO could have established from the Belgrade telephone book - is appalling.

But, worse, the damage done by this bungle amounts to more than needless destruction and still more innocent lives being lost.

It could change the course of this war towards humiliating climb-down.

Hitherto, despite much painful uncertainty and the consequence of upwards of a million Albanian Kosovars being uprooted from their homes, it had begun to look as if Slobodan Milosevic was beginning to crumble under more than six weeks of air attacks.

From Yugoslavia, through Russia, had come the feelers for compromise.

An international force might have been allowed into Kosovo to guarantee the return and safety of the refugees - one of NATO's key conditions. Then came the gigantic foul-up of the bombing of the embassy of a nation already hostile to this campaign and now, as a member of the United Nations Security Council, virtually certain to rule out all but the weakest restraint by the UN upon Milosevic's rule in Kosovo.

In short, the compromise he was seeking may now become one that is most favourable to him.

And that outcome may be the sort that NATO will have to agree to if it is to extricate itself from the conflict now that it is headed in that baleful direction.

For the only alternative is escalation.

Yet can that now be risked if the blessing that NATO must seek from the UN for its goal of a peace-keeping presence in Kosovo - and, ideally, one constituted by the UN itself - looks like being withheld because of Chinese dissent?

And can it be risked if there is domestic opposition within the NATO nations - particularly in America - to escalation of the conflict? Certainly, whoever was responsible for this blunder has provided Milosevic with a lifeline - just when it seemed he was running out of rope.

But, tragically, it may have dealt the cruellest blow to the Kosovars.

What is to become of them?

Are they to be dispersed around the globe as NATO gives up and Milosevic's ethnic cleansing completed for him by its defeat and loss of international credibility as a force for peace and justice?

Or are they to be returned to their homes with no real guarantee of their security - except for Milosevic's signature on a paper peace deal - and the Balkans left for years as a festering sore destined to erupt once more in tragedy and atrocity?

Either the way, the prospects thrown up this bombing blunder are daunting.

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.