The Kosovo crisis has rallied the full international community against Serbia, as Russia lined up with NATO partners to demand "untramelled access" for The Hague war crimes tribunal and the international monitoring force.
Russia's support, unveiled yesterday at a joint council meeting with NATO in Brussels, increases the pressure on the Serb leader, Mr Slobodan Milosevic, to climb down before tomorrow's meeting in London of the six-country Contact Group to discuss a formal threat of military action.
NATO officials said yesterday that no air strikes or other military action should be expected until the group met. NATO'S secretary-general, Mr Javier Solana, left last night for a three-day trip to Iceland and Norway, a clear sign no strikes will be ordered before the weekend.
The logistics of air strikes would also require a pause. Only 77 NATO warplanes are available at air bases in Italy, although four RAF Harrier GR7 ground attack aircraft and a tanker are to be sent to Italy to augment the four already there, the British Defence Secretary said last night. NATO estimates that 250 to 300 warplanes would be required for a credible air assault. Despite NATO blustering that the 96-hour alert for air strikes had been cut to 48 hours, further reinforcements in Italy would be needed.
Meanwhile, a spokesman for the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe yesterday said an examination of 28 bodies from the Racak massacre, which triggered the current standoff, showed the vast majority had been killed at short range by gunshots or cutting instruments. Some had bullet wounds in their hands, as though they had tried to protect their faces.
"All were in civilian clothes and the holes in the clothes match the holes in the bodies," he said. In only one case was there evidence that a bullet had been fired at a man after he was dead.
The weight of evidence was that the dead were victims of an artillery and ground assault which had turned into a series of executions.