Serbia yesterday accused international mediators of trying to impose a fraudulent peace on Kosovo as the US reported a big Yugoslav military build-up around the province.
The Serbian President, Mr Milan Milutinovic, arriving for a third day of renewed peace talks in Paris, said the Yugoslav delegation had made viable proposals for Kosovo's institutions but "the others would like to have just a fraud".
The US Defence Department accused the Yugoslav military of moving more than 30,000 Serbian troops into and near Kosovo and "bracing for war" with NATO as the peace talks continue.
Yugoslav forces maintained a relentless advance on ethnic Albanian rebel positions on Tuesday and yesterday, pushing forward on two fronts in the centre of Kosovo and leaving villages ablaze. The Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) lost Shala, one of its key zone headquarters, in fighting west of Vucitrn in the north of the province, an international monitor said yesterday.
A UNHCR spokesman said some 7,000 ethnic Albanians fled their homes in southern Kosovo after Serbian security forces shelled the village of Kabas north of Prizren.
"They started fleeing this morning and the movement continued all day," said Mr Fernando del Mundo, spokesman for the office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees. Meanwhile in Paris, the three mediators - the US envoy, Mr Chris Hill, Mr Boris Mayorsky of Russia and Mr Wolfgang Petritsch of Austria, representing the EU - rejected Belgrade's list of amendments to the draft autonomy accord. This was negotiated in Rambouillet, near Paris, last month and accepted on Monday by the Kosovo Albanians.
Diplomats said the co-chairmen of the talks, the French Foreign Minister, Mr Hubert Vedrine, and the British Foreign Secretary, Mr Robin Cook, might return to wind up this round of talks today if there is no progress. It would then be up to NATO to reactivate its plans for air strikes against Yugoslavia.
In Washington, the Pentagon said between 14,000 and 18,000 Yugoslav troops were in Kosovo with another 16,000 to 21,000 poised around the edge of the province. Under a ceasefire agreement signed last October, Belgrade is allowed to have 14,000 soldiers in Kosovo.
International monitors in Pristina said the Yugoslav army had moved at least eight of its most modern M-84 tanks into Kosovo for the first time since their mission began last year.
Yugoslavia has extended military service by one month for conscripts and its pro-government media have accused the West of seeking pretexts to attack.
"There's not a lot of reason for optimism coming from the Serb side," the State Department spokesman, Mr James Rubin, said. "Time and patience are clearly running out."
Officials in the six-nation Contact Group said the Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic always left any concession to the very last minute. "You never know with the Serbs until you get right down to the wire," one said.
He said that while the ethnic Albanians were playing the "good guys" in Paris, KLA guerrillas were continuing to provoke Yugoslav forces on the ground.
But the chief Kosovo delegate at the peace talks, the KLA political director, Mr Hashim Thaqi, said in an interview with the Kosova press news agency: "Serbia is interested in continuing the war and we have to defend ourselves."
The US yesterday hinted that NATO air strikes against Serb positions could come quickly if Belgrade refused to sign. The US State Department announced that planning for the speedy evacuation of the US embassy in Belgrade was in the advanced stages and said that it appeared President Milosevic was very close to triggering the attacks.