German troops could be sent to the Serbian province of Kosovo as part of a NATO force, according to the Chancellor, Mr Gerhard Schroder.
In an interview to be published today in the weekly news magazine, Focus, Mr Schroder calls for swift international action to prevent an escalation of the conflict between Serbian forces and the separatist Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA).
"We are negotiating within the international community and in that context, one cannot rule anything out," he said.
The Chancellor said he was confident any decision to send troops would be approved by both the governing centre-left coalition and the conservative opposition.
Germany's constitutional court ruled in 1994 the Bundeswehr could participate in NATO and Western European Union missions abroad if they were aimed at enforcing a United Nations resolution. The Bundestag must approve each military intervention by a simple majority.
The memory of German military atrocities in Yugoslavia during the second World War makes the issue of military intervention in the Balkans especially sensitive. But Mr Schroder insisted the international community's responsibility to prevent a descent into full-scale civil war outweighed other considerations.
"We must discuss with our partners how we can prevent a development similar to that in Bosnia. The intervention there did not come until after tens of thousands of people were dead," he said.
Germany's special envoy to Bosnia, Mr Hans Koschnick, said yesterday he was in favour of sending German soldiers to Kosovo, but he insisted the United States must take part in any such military operation. And he warned the West against intervening in the conflict on behalf of the KLA.
"That would be the worst thing that could ever happen to Europe's foreign policy," he said.
Reuters adds:
Western powers will seek to agree this week on a tough new take-it-or-leave-it strategy for halting the conflict, hoping their Contact Group partner Russia can agree to back it.
Details of the plan taking shape are sketchy, but it appears to centre on a concerted effort to force both sides to accept what they so far have refused to negotiate: Yugoslavia would have to grant self-government or face bombing; Kosovo Albanians would have to shelve independence demands or go it alone.
How this can be implemented may become a little clearer today when EU foreign ministers hold regular consultations in Brussels, with Kosovo dominating the agenda. A week of intense diplomacy is in store.
Meanwhile in Washington, the US chief of the Kosovo Verification Mission, Mr William Walker, repeated the massacre charge which infuriated the Belgrade government last week and nearly led to his expulsion.
Mr Walker, writing in Newsweek magazine, said attention should have focused on finding those responsible for killing 45 ethnic Albanians in the Kosovo village of Racak nine days ago, instead of on his characterisation of the attack as a massacre.
