China yesterday supported the Russian threat to bomb the Chechen capital, saying it "understood the efforts made by Russia to maintain its national unification and territorial integrity".
President Yeltsin, apparently against the wishes of his doctors, is due to visit Beijing tomorrow and on Friday.
President Clinton has warned Russia against the consequences of its ultimatum to bomb and shell Grozny but it is not clear what the US can or will do if the threat is followed through.
Speaking at a Human Rights Day ceremony at the White House, Mr Clinton said if the threats are carried out and civilians are harmed, "Russia will pay a heavy price for these actions with each passing day, sinking deeply into a morass that will intensify extremism and diminish its own standing in the world."
With its own secessionist movements in Tibet and Xinjiang province, China is the one major power on which Russia can rely for international endorsement of its actions against Chechnya - and this may be precisely why Mr Yeltsin decided to postpone a meeting in Paris with President Chirac and the German Chancellor, Mr Gerhard Schroder, and travel east instead.
But Russia said Moscow and Beijing have no plans to form an anti-West front. China is rebuilding its more important relationship with the United States and was careful not to portray Russia as an embryonic Cold War partner against a third country.
A Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman, Ms Zhang Qiyue, told reporters yesterday China was devoted to building a constructive strategic partnership with both Russia and the US. "These types of partnership are not the same as Cold War alignments of the past," she said.
Chechnya, she emphasised, was a purely Russian internal affair. "That is a fact widely recognised by the international community. China understands and supports all Russia's efforts to maintain national unity and territorial integrity."
Underlining Beijing's warming ties with Washington, China has given permission to US naval ships to resume visits to Hong Kong, suspended during the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia. The flagship of the US Seventh Fleet, the Blue Ridge, steamed into Hong Kong harbour yesterday with a complement of 820 crew and 250 naval staff.
In a stern warning to the Russian leadership, the British Foreign Secretary, Mr Robin Cook, said if Russia escalated its military campaign against Grozny it risked losing crucial EU economic aid.
In a Commons statement Mr Cook welcomed the IMF's decision not to recommend the disbursement of u400 million (sterling) in another $640 million in technical and financial aid to Russia and he condemned "wholeheartedly" Russia's "leave-or-die" ultimatum to the people of Grozny.
The Russian Prime Minister, Mr Vladimir Putin, was expressionless as he advised the West on television yesterday to mind its own business and described the IMF's reasons for blocking its loan as a "pretext".
In an interview on Russia's NTV channel news programme, the Interior Minister, Mr Vladimir Rushailo, while not withdrawing the threat of bombarding Grozny, hinted that a corridor to allow civilians to escape might be left open after Saturday's deadline expired.
Ms Holly Cartner, executive director of the Human Rights Watch Europe and Central Asia division, called on the Russian authorities "to take every possible step to ensure that civilians are made aware of any safe exit route leading out of Grozny. Then Russian authorities must also protect the corridor."
Mr Lyoma Mashtaev (39), a former driver, who left Grozny six days ago, told Human Rights Watch: "People laugh when a humanitarian corridor is mentioned, nobody believes it. There aren't any humanitarian corridors, and in any case, nobody knows about it. There's no television or radio, and if there were batteries before, they've long been used up. Nobody knows anything in the city. Sometimes leaflets calling for the rebel fighters to give themselves up are dropped."
Earlier, the Russian Ambassador to Britain, Mr Yuri Fokine, was summoned to the Foreign Office in London, where the Foreign Secretary told him "in no uncertain terms what Europe and the United Kingdom think about the five-day ultimatum".
