Britain yesterday warned it was prepared to launch air strikes against Yugoslav forces in Kosovo following intelligence reports that Serb forces are ready to start a major offensive.
The warning comes amid claims by guerrilla chiefs that Serb forces in Kosovo are preparing for a major attack on rebel positions in the run-up to peace talks on Monday in Paris.
It is intended as a clear sign from Britain, and by implication the US, that they remain committed to air strikes if there is a fresh catastrophe in Kosovo, or if Yugoslavia refuses to allow NATO peacekeepers into the province to enforce a peace deal.
It came as Russia's Foreign Minister, Mr Igor Ivanov, emerged from talks with the Yugoslav President, Mr Slobodan Milosevic, in Belgrade, no nearer to a Kosovo peace deal than Thursday's attempts by the US envoy, Mr Richard Holbrooke.
A statement from the Russian Foreign Ministry said the talks had ended with Mr Milosevic "decisively and finally rejecting" the US demand for NATO peacekeepers to be deployed in Kosovo.
Meanwhile, Serb forces launched two fresh offensives in Kosovo itself, while the government cracked down on ethnic Albanian newspapers, threatening three with draconian fines.
The fighting is centred on Vucitrn, which lies on a key highway connecting the capital, Pristina, with Belgrade.
Meanwhile, Serb units made attacks on rebels around the ski resort of Brezavica, previously a backwater in this war.
International monitors were caught wrong-footed. Their units were in forests a few miles east of Brezavica, trying to reach hundreds of Albanian refugees who had fled there during battles in the town of Kacanik earlier in the week and are refusing to come down.
Monitors say the Serbs are operating with six times the number of troops they had agreed under a ceasefire agreement signed last October, and are moving battlegroups from place to place.
"Security forces have been observed to go into a region and sort of clean up," said Ms Beatrice Lacoste, spokeswoman for the monitors. "There is fighting taking place as we speak around Brezavica."
A further blow to peace hopes came when Serbian authorities issued arrest warrants for KLA members of the Albanian team due to be in Paris for Monday's talks.
The KLA officials were yesterday inside rebel territory trying to agree a common policy line, and the West will now have the problem of trying to bring them out in time for the talks. "We are trying to get agreement, but I don't know what will happen," a spokesman told The Irish Times. The ethnic Albanian newspapers, Kosovo Sot and Gazeta Shqiptare in Kosovo, were threatened with large fines after being accused by the authorities of "fomenting religious and ethnic hatred". A third newspaper, Rilindja, which appeared back in print only a few weeks ago after being banned in 1990, is also threatened with fines for failing to register as a newspaper.
UN officials reported that Mr Milosevic had told them he was not only opposed to a NATO peacekeeping force for Kosovo, but also for the possible compromise, a force led by the UN.
The Serbian Information Minister, Mr Aleksander Vucic, said: "What Serbia can never accept and never will accept at any price, no matter the pressure, blackmail and ultimatums from abroad, are any kind of foreign military troops, including NATO troops."