President Clinton has indicated that NATO bomb attacks against Serbia are immiment, after the failure of talks aimed at resolving the crisis in Kosovo. Mr Clinton said this evening that the Serbian President, Slobodan Milosevic was continuning to defy the international community. He said NATO was united and prepared to carry out its warning. Earlier, after talks with President Milosevic in Belgrade, the United States envoy, Richard Holbrooke, said the situation was the bleakest in four years of negotations.
The failure of diplomatic efforts was acknowledged this afternoon when President Clinton ordered his special envoy to return home from Belgrade. Mr Holbrooke had been trying to agree a last ditch deal with President Slobodan Milosovic. Mr Holbrooke was trying to get Yugoslavia to accept the autonomy package agreed in France, including the presence of western troops in Kosovo, something Belgrade has said it will never accept.
The second round of talks in Belgrade between President Milosovic and the Richard Holbrooke ended without progress today as Belgrade remained unyielding in its refusal to accept foreign troops in Kosovo, as part of the implementation of a peace deal. Today's talks lasted two hours. Last night, four hours of talks between Mr Holbrooke and President Milosevic ended without agreement. Afterwards Mr Holbrooke said there had been no significant change in Mr Milosevic's position. Mr Holbrooke said Yugoslavia's increased military action in the province had intensified the problem. In Washington, President Clinton said this threat was not a bluff. Earlier today, Belgrade was also warned that there would be no further negotiations.
In the House of Commons this afternoon, the British Prime Minister, Tony Blair, said Britain was prepared to take strong action on Kosovo. He said a humanitarian disaster had to be diverted and that to walk away now would destroy NATO's credibility. Today, Germany, on behalf of the European Union, appealed to the Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic to sign the Kosovo peace accord. The EU's representative at the talks Wolfgang Petritsch said President Milosevic is simply not ready for a political compromise.
Meanwhile, Russia's Prime Minister, Yevgeny Primakov, whose country strongly opposes military intervention over Kosovo, has left Moscow for a five-day visit to Washington. Russian government sources say he will cut short his trip if NATO carries out its threat to attack Yugoslav targets.
The United Nations Refugee Agency has said that more than 25,000 Kosovo Albanians have fled their homes since the Serbs began a new offensive on Saturday. The Yugoslav army claims to have inflicted heavy losses on the Kosovo Liberation Army.
