=(GRAPHIC)= WASHINGTON, May 25 (AFP) - The long-awaited release of the Cox report alleging a massive Chinese nuclear weapons espionage campaign that dealt incalculable damage to American security has driven home and reinforced the rift in Sino-US relations. The 700-page report detailing allegations that China has been stealing state-of-the-art US nuclear secrets for decades, including those for the neutron bomb, hit the public as relations between Beijing and Washington are already near an all-time low. A special congressional panel under Republican Representative Christopher Cox released its report on Capitol Hill Tuesday detailing the allegations, which China has angrily denied. "This comes at a difficult and volatile junction and will require perspective here also in Beijing," said Gerrit Gong, director of the Asian Studies Program at the Center for Strategic and International Relations in Washington. "The concerns in (the report) are serious and will require an adjustment in terms of national security approach to China," Gong said, but added that he did not see its release as a harbinger of total enmity between Washington and Beijing. "I do not see that it will necessarily require the United States and the People's Republic of China to take an adversarial relationship, but its a good reminder that there are competitive and cooperative elements in the relationship." One former senior US diplomat with long experience in China agreed. "Obviously this is not going to help," he said, adding though the hope that "cooler heads would prevail" as both countries have strong interests in maintaining good relations. "Yes its going to complicate matters," the diplomat said on condition of anonymity. "It's going to take leadership by both sides to overcome this." But with anti-Chinese sentiment on the rise in Congress over human rights as the 10th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre approaches, the report, even before it was released, already had lawmakers' blood boiling and looking for revenge. Senate Republican Majority Leader Trent Lott warned last week that bilateral trade deals with China as well as Most Favored Nation trading status and US support for its accession to the World Trade Organization (WTO) might suffer as a result of the espionage. On Tuesday, Commerce William Daley said the report was "damaging" and would indeed complicate the WTO process. In Beijing, which is still furious over the bombing of its embassy in Belgrade on May 5 by NATO commanded US planes, officials said the Cox report was aimed at "poisoning the relations between the two countries." "The intention of this report is to spread the China threat theory and to whip up anti-China sentiments and to deflect people's attentions (from the embassy bombing)," foreign ministry spokesman Zhu Bangzao said Tuesday. The bombing incident, which Washington says was a tragic accident and has apologized for repeatedly, is perhaps the most visible sign of the fractured ties. The US embassy in Beijing as well as several consulates around China were trashed as angry mobs vented their anger at the bombing with eggs, paints, stones and small fires. More than two weeks after the bombing, China banned US Navy port calls in Hong Kong over the incident. But the bombing and its aftermath are just the latest symptoms of worsening ties. Since US President Bill Clinton's trip to China last June, a seemingly never-ending series of misunderstandings, blunders and recriminations on both sides have contributed to the rift. Reports that China sought illegally to influence the result of the 1996 US presidential election set tempers ablaze last year and continue to dog Sino-US ties even as the Cox report has refocused the area of concern. Earlier this year, following a renewed crackdown on dissent, Washington unsuccessfully introduced a resolution at the UN Human Rights Commission condemning Beijing for its human rights practices, drawing Chinese ire ahead as Premier Zhu Rongji prepared to visit the United States. That trip, which many hoped would herald an improvement in ties, now appears to have had the opposite effect with a agreement on China's WTO membership still elusive and the two sides even further apart on other matters such as defense issues related to Taiwan. US intelligence experts have accused China of building up its missile capability directed at Taiwan and as efforts to counter that threat with the possible inclusion of Taipei in a proposed Theatre Missile Defense system. Beijing is vehemently opposed to suggestions that Taiwan, which it regards as a renegade province, might be included in the system which Washington insists would be purely defensive.  