Serbian president gets `last warning'

The EU has sent the Serbian President, Mr Slobodan Milosevic, what the British Foreign Secretary, Mr Robin Cook, called a "last warning" on Kosovo. Mr Cook, also president of the EU Council of Ministers, said the Serb-inspired violence of the last week had resulted in 50,000 people losing their homes and warned that the EU "cannot tolerate a return to ethnic cleansing in Europe".

Foreign ministers imposed a ban on new investment in Serbia and called on international security organisations to "consider all options", including the possible use of force if sanctioned by the UN, if the Belgrade authorities "fail to halt their excessive use of force and to take the steps needed for political progress".

An unusually strong statement, referring to attacks as "beginning to constitute a new wave of ethnic cleansing", said that Mr Milosevic "bears a special responsibility . . . for promoting a peaceful settlement to the problems of Kosovo. He should not believe that the international community will be taken in by talk of peace when the reality on the ground is even greater repression."

Belgrade was engaged, the statement said, "in a campaign of violence going far beyond what could legitimately be described as a targeted anti-terrorist operation. We insist on an immediate stop to all violent action and the withdrawal of special police and army units." The German Foreign Minister, Mr Klaus Kinkel, said Mr Milosevic had apparently decided his political survival lay in setting Serbia against the whole world.

But the ministers made a point of instructing the Commission to ensure that measures taken against Belgrade did not apply to its partner and former ally, Montenegro. The statement welcomed the recent parliamentary election's endorsement of the reformist President Milan Djukanovic.

The EU insisted on access by humanitarian teams and international forensic teams to Kosovo and pledges to strengthen its own monitoring mission. It will also send increased aid to the refugees.

Agreement required some balancing between the Germans, who want to see a clearer commitment to use external force, and Greece which insists that the politics of Serbia and its disputed province must be resolved at internal level. Ethnic Albanians make up 90 per cent of Kosovo's population.

But the EU has no military means, and the focus of diplomatic pressure now moves to the UN, NATO, and the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe. Mr Cook is due to meet the ethnic Albanian leader, Mr Ibrahim Rugova, tomorrow, while NATO defence ministers will discuss their options on Thursday. A meeting of the nine-nation Contact Group will take place in London on Friday.

In the meantime British and US diplomats are understood to be preparing a UN Security Council resolution.

Reuters adds from London: Britain wants western governments to consider a direct threat of air strikes against Serbia to force a settlement in Kosovo rather than getting bogged down in lengthy border deployments, officials said yesterday. The Prime Minister, Mr Tony Blair, signalled the change in strategy when he told his cabinet, in remarks leaked by his office to Sunday newspapers, that they had to be prepared to use force.

In Istanbul yesterday, Kosovo was also discussed by diplomats from nine Balkans countries - Turkey, Greece, Macedonia, Bosnia, Croatia, Romania, Bulgaria, Albania and Yugoslavia - meeting at a former Ottoman palace.