Germany unveiled a peace plan for Kosovo yesterday but said a sceptical Russia still needed to be won over to the idea of a UN-backed international force to implement the deal.
Under the six-stage plan by the Foreign Minister, Mr Joschka Fischer, NATO would halt its air strikes against Yugoslavia for 24 hours to enable Belgrade to start pulling its troops out of Kosovo. However, a complete end to the Western alliance's air offensive could only come once President Slobodan Milosevic of Yugoslavia pulled his troops out of the Serbian province.
An international peacekeeping force backed by a UN mandate would then be deployed in Kosovo, enabling hundreds of thousands of mainly Muslim ethnic Albanian refugees to return home.
Mr Fischer said Russia "almost fully agreed" to the plan, which was discussed by the US Secretary of State, Ms Madeleine Albright, and the Russian Foreign Minister, Mr Igor Ivanov, on Tuesday in Oslo. But, he said in Bonn, Moscow still had concerns over the make-up of the peacekeeping force.
"The most difficult problem is the composition," he said, before meeting the visiting Japanese Deputy Foreign Minister, Mr Keizo Takemi.
Washington wants any peacekeepers to be under effective NATO command, arguing that only NATO has the necessary military muscle. But, so far, that has proved unacceptable to Russia.
The German plan also foresees a meeting of foreign ministers from the Group of Eight - the US, Japan, Germany, France, Britain, Italy, Canada and Russia - to draft a UN resolution formalising the arrangements.
But Mr Fischer later said a G8 meeting might not be needed and that the resolution could be finalised at an emergency session of the UN Security Council, where Russia has a right of veto.
Germany put its proposals to an informal summit of EU leaders in Brussels yesterday which was attended by the UN Secretary-General, Mr Kofi Annan.
Bonn is hoping that Mr Annan will play a key role in bringing Moscow on board.
The US said the German peace initiative for Kosovo was a "constructive" effort to find a settlement in the conflict.
"The German discussions are fully in line with the conditions that NATO has laid down," the State Department spokesman, Mr James Rubin, said. "For us, this is a beginning of the discussions of the modalities of how NATO conditions would be implemented but in no way departs from NATO's conditions."