Russia accused NATO yesterday of misleading it over alliance air exercises in the southern Balkans, hours before the Yugoslav President, Mr Slobodan Milosevic, was due to arrive in Moscow to discuss the Kosovo crisis.
The criticism highlighted the difficulties in reaching an international consensus over Kosovo although a telephone conversation later between President Yeltsin and Clinton showed efforts were being made. Western officials said a fresh wave of refugees was streaming across the border into Northern Albania, fleeing fighting.
Mr Clinton's spokesman Mr Mike McCurry , said Russia's reservations over the NATO exercise3s did not come up in the discussion and stressed that Washington was ready to seek United Nations permission to use "all necessary means" if diplomacy failed.
Mr Milosevic declined to speak to waiting reporters after arriving yesterday evening.
The Russian Foreign Ministry said he would hold separate talks today with Mr Yeltsin and the Russian Foreign Minister, Mr Yevgeny Primakov.
A Kremlin statement said Mr Yeltsin had reiterated that he opposed any use of force and said Mr Clinton had expressed hope the Kremlin leader's talks with Mr Milosevic would help[ end the clashes in Kosovo, which have raised fears of a wider Balkan conflict.The Russian Defence Minister, Mr Igor Sergeyev, earlier made it clear Russia felt it had not been consulted properly over NATO's air exercises and that he believed he had been misled at talks with Western alliance defence ministers in Brussels last week. "As soon as I get back to Moscow I find out the exercises have begun," Mr Sergeyev said: "This was unexpected for me.
As a soldier, I am used to valuing honesty in people. I can't understand why they treated me in this way."
"We discussed the Kosovo problem. We all agreed that first of all it was necessary to resolve it with political measures," Mr Sergeyev said in televised comments after talks with Gen Henry Shelton, chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff.
Gen Shelton played down the differences, "Russia has not expressed any concern today about the exercises actually taking place, just about their timing," he told a news conference.
A Russian Foreign Ministry official said Moscow was recalling its top military envoy at the Western alliance because of the tension in Kosovo, although NATO officials said the decision appeared to have no political significance.
In New York, the UN Security Council authorised a one-year renewal of both a 33,000-strong NATO-led Stabilisation Force (SFOR) in Bosnia and a UN mission there consisting mainly of a 2,000-member police task force.
SFOR implements the military provisions of the 1995 Dayton peace accords.