As NATO aircraft carry out sabre-rattling manoeuvres in northern Albania and Macedonia today, President Slobodan Milosevic of Yugoslavia will arrive in Moscow for talks aimed at averting armed NATO intervention in Kosovo.
While Mr Milosevic meets President Yeltsin of Russia, the NATO alliance will conduct its aerial exercises near the province as a warning to Serbia that it may face attacks unless it stops its crackdown on ethnic Albanians.
There were further clashes between Serbian police and Kosovo Liberation Army members yesterday. A senior Serbian police officer in Kosovo said yesterday that the Kosovo Liberation Army killed two policemen and seriously injured two others in separate attacks yesterday. The attacks took place near the towns of Rakovina and Drenovac, LieutCol Novica Zdravkovic told a press conference in the Kosovan capital, Pristina.
He maintained that the KLA used mortars and anti-tank weapons in the attack. "Albanian terrorist training and armaments are still going on in the territory of Republic of Albania," he said.
Albanian sources said Serbian police had shot a number of Kosovo Albanians in these incidents. However, there is no means of getting independent verification of claims from the Serbian authorities or the KLA, due to the restrictions on journalists travelling in the region.
As NATO aircraft prepared for their show of force last night, there was still doubt over whether the alliance can issue an effective threat of force, following Russia's stated opposition to NATO military action. Moscow, unhappy with NATO's dominant post-Cold War role in European security, will seek to exploit its traditional ties to fellow-Orthodox Serbia to bring about a political solution.
Russia is also in a position to veto any proposal at the UN Security Council to use force, thus casting doubt on the legitimacy of such action. Moscow has insisted that any use of force must be approved by the United Nations Security Council, where it has the power of veto.
However, the US has maintained that military intervention does not need Security Council backing. And in an interview published this morning, the German Defence Minister, Mr Volker
Ruhe, said he did not rule out NATO military intervention even without a UN mandate.
"Certainly it would be ideal to have a UN mandate for an active intervention in Kosovo," he says in this morning's edition of the mass-circulation Bild newspaper. "But we must recognise that we may not be able to obtain such a mandate quickly and Milosevic will use that time for further murder, destruction and expulsion."
The NATO Secretary General, Mr Javier Solana, said yesterday the recent history of Bosnia and the crisis in Kosovo showed the importance of involving Russia in finding a lasting solution.
Meanwhile, fresh economic sanctions took effect at the weekend. Restrictions have been imposed on Yugoslavia's international financial transactions and a ban has been put on new investment in the country. All Yugoslav Airlines flights to and from Britain, the US, France, Italy and Germany have been grounded.
The foreign ministers of these five countries and Russia approved a set of demands on Friday, including an end to all action by Serbian security forces against civilians.
They also called for the withdrawal from Kosovo of repressive units, unimpeded access for international monitors and humanitarian groups, the right of refugees to return to their homes, and rapid progress in a dialogue with the Kosovo Albanian leadership.
The ministers underlined that Mr Milosevic should use his talks with Mr Yeltsin, scheduled for tomorrow morning, to announce progress on the above steps and to commit Belgrade to their full implementation.
A senior Russian Foreign Ministry official, quoted by Interfax news agency, said Mr Yeltsin would demand immediate political compromises from Mr Milosevic to avoid the use of force.
Ninety per cent of Kosovo's 1.8 million people are ethnic Albanians, most of whom want independence from centralised Serbian rule.
Serbian forces have been engaged in a violent crackdown in the region in recent months. They say it is aimed at the KLA but many civilians have been killed and tens of thousands have fled their homes as a result of the crackdown.
Aircraft from more than 10 countries will participate in today's manoeuvres. "The objective of this exercise is to demonstrate NATO's capability to assimilate and project multinational air power rapidly into the region," the US air force said in a statement.
Mr Solana also struck a determined note: "On Kosovo, let me be quite clear that NATO will not stand idly by," he said. "We will not allow a repeat of the situation of 1991 in Bosnia."