In Paris, the six nation Contact Group on the former Yugoslavia has decided to extend the stalled Kosovo peace talks until next Saturday to try and find an agreed settlement for the southern Serbian province. However Serbia has repeated its firm opposition to NATO peacekeeping troops in Kosovo, appearing to rule out what ethnic Albanians regard as the only credible guarantee of a political settlement giving them autonomy.
Earlier, US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright met the Serbian president Milan Milutinovic in Paris, in an attempt to get the Serbs to accept an international plan to end the conflict in Kosovo. Serbs sources described the hour-long meeting at Mrs Albright's hotel as embarassing and uncomfortable. Mrs Albright then travelled to Rambouillet castle, 30 miles from the French capital, to address Serb and ethnic Albanian delegates discussing a proposed peace plan. She told them that the United States was ready to back diplomacy with force.
Foreign ministers of the major powers arrived at the venue of the Kosovo peace talks near Paris today to warn the Serb and ethnic Albanian negotiators to start making progress. The talks have achieved little since they began last weekend. Mrs Albright and ministers from the five other nations that make up the contact group on Kosovo met and decided to give the warring parties one more week to settle their differences. The Western powers have blamed the Serbs for stalling the talks, and have revived the threat of NATO air strikes on Serb targets.
