The major powers yesterday endorsed a last-ditch mission by the US special envoy, Mr Richard Holbrooke, to press President Slobodan Milosevic of Yugoslavia to withdraw his troops from Kosovo and avert NATO air strikes.
After a meeting of foreign ministers of the six-nation Contact Group, at Heathrow, the British Foreign Secretary, Mr Robin Cook, said Mr Holbrooke would meet Mr Milosevic today to put six demands for a full end to a Serbian crackdown in the rebel province.
The Russian Foreign Minister, Mr Igor Ivanov, fresh from talks with Mr Milosevic in Belgrade, said he believed the Contact Group - the United States, Russia, Britain, France, Germany and Italy - was moving closer to a political settlement of the crisis and that Mr Milosevic would comply with a United Nations resolution calling on him to back down on Kosovo.
But he warned of "dire consequences of an international nature" if the West used force without the approval of the United Nations Security Council.
Mr Cook said the use of force was a matter for NATO and Russia would not be invited to approve it.
The US Secretary of State, Ms Madeleine Albright, who stopped over in London after briefing NATO ambassadors in Brussels, told a news conference: "In terms of the use of force, well, all the members of the Contact Group may not agree on that but . . . those that do not agree would not have a veto over the action."
Mr Cook listed the Contact Group's demands as an end to all violence in Kosovo, the withdrawal of Serbian security forces and heavy artillery to pre-March levels, free access for relief agencies, full co-operation with an international war crimes tribunal, the return of refugees and a start to negotiations on self-rule with Kosovo's ethnic Albanian majority.
Compliance must be enshrined durably and verifiably in a new UN Security Council resolution so that Mr Milosevic could be held to account for any backsliding, he said.
An uneasy truce seems to be holding between Serb forces and the remnants of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) guerrillas, whose uprising in spring brought a ferocious counter-offensive by Belgrade.
They remain in control of remote enclaves such as Jezerce in southern Kosovo and the mountains above it. But heavily armed Serb police guard the only road in, making the village as much a prison as a stronghold.
Refugees huddled around a school in another Kosovo village yesterday said NATO air strikes alone would not save them from disease, winter or the Serb attacks that drove them from their homes.
Like many international observers, ordinary ethnic Albanians insist that merely punishing Belgrade for its campaign in Kosovo with bombs would give them little satisfaction. They want an international force in Kosovo to protect them, and large-scale aid to rebuild their shattered lives.
"There would have to be foreign ground troops here. Everyone is too frightened to go back to their homes," said Bahti, a middle-aged Kosovo Albanian working for a charity distributing meagre rations of bedding, plastic sheeting and food to thousands of people in Damanek, western Kosovo.
Damanek was a village of little more than 1,000 before Serbia launched its drive to smash separatist guerrillas a few months ago. It was lucky. Serb troops never bothered to occupy Damanek, and so its houses still have roofs. When neighbouring hamlets were burned or shelled into ruins, their residents converged on the relative haven of Damanek.
"There are 3,500 people here now. In some houses 150 people are sleeping. Others are outdoors," said Bahti. He said some 25,000 were homeless in his area alone, no more than 25 km wide. "There's a sort of ceasefire at the moment. But if NATO bombs start falling the Serbs are likely to take the gloves off again, thinking they have nothing to lose," a diplomat in Kosovo said. "Air strikes won't necessarily help the Albanians."
Earlier, the US Secretary of State said she expected an "activation" order for NATO military intervention in Yugoslavia in "the next few days".