The memoir is reported to say that Jiang acceded to a personal plea from Slobodan Milosevic, the Serbian leader, to shelter key military intelligence personnel, and that 14 Serbs and three Chinese citizens died there when US bombers struck.
Although the United States apologized for the raid - which led to anti-western demonstrations in China - blaming faulty target mapping by the CIA, the Chinese government never accepted this explanation.
Now a Chinese-language magazine in Hong Kong has published an account of the bombing from a series of essays written in retirement by Jiang, 85, who stepped down from his last post in 2004.
It said Jiang regretted allowing the Serbs sanctuary inside China's diplomatic mission and believed it was a serious political mistake. The memoir is said to tell how a furious Chinese government was forced to mute its protests after the Americans privately presented evidence of Serbian electronic communications from within the embassy.
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