The Chinese premier, Mr Zhu Rongji, cited Northern Ireland, Tibet and Quebec as three areas in the world where the military intervention in Yugoslavia created precedents for outside action on the issue of human rights.
"The Kosovo question is an ethnic problem, which of course is an internal matter," Mr Zhu told the Canadian newspaper The Globe and Mail, before leaving on a 10-day trip to the US and Canada.
"Questions like this exist in many countries. You in Canada have the question of Quebec; the UK has the Northern Ireland question; and for China, there is the question of Tibet," he said in a text of the interview published yesterday in Beijing by the official Xinhua news agency.
"If military intervention is used against a country for a human rights issue, that will create a very bad precedent in the world. With that, people would wonder whether foreign powers should take military actions against Canada, the UK and China over ethnic issues of Quebec, Northern Ireland and Tibet."
This is the first time that a senior Chinese official has linked China's vehement opposition to the NATO bombardment of Yugoslavia with the internal situation in China.
Beijing claims that Tibet is historically part of the Chinese motherland and therefore an internal matter for China.
The Chinese leadership raised no objections when the Taoiseach, Mr Ahern, drew a parallel between the Tibet and Northern Ireland questions in a speech in Beijing during his visit to China in September last year.
The fact that a model of conflict resolution had been worked out in Belfast which did not remove Northern Ireland from the United Kingdom meant that it could be presented to the Chinese as an example which did not threaten Chinese unity if applied to Tibet.
The Chinese media have ignored the human rights aspect of the Balkans conflict.
Mr Zhu said he feared the conflagration could spread. "If we should refuse to recognise a country's sovereignty, I am afraid that would lead to war, even a world war," he said. "Military actions cannot solve problems."