In what looked like a pre-emptive swoop on the evidence, Serbian police yesterday removed the bodies of 40 massacre victims from a Kosovo mosque as Yugoslavia defied the UN and NATO.
It slammed its door in the face of a UN war crimes prosecutor, saying The Hague tribunal had no jurisdiction, kept NATO generals waiting and shot up more ethnic Albanian villages in Kosovo, including Racak, the scene of the alleged massacre.
The Belgrade government also announced yesterday that Ambassador William Walker, a veteran US diplomat heading the Kosovo Verification Mission monitoring a three-month-old ceasefire in the province, had been declared persona non grata and ordered to leave within 48 hours. Mr Walker, along with other western officials, had laid the blame squarely on Yugoslav security forces for the slaughter of 45 ethnic Albanians whose bodies were discovered in the village of Racak at the weekend.
In a strongly worded statement that did not rule out the use of force, the US warned President Slobodan Milosevic he was "playing with fire" and demanded he reverse a decision on Mr Walker.
US National security officials met at the White House. In New York, UN Security Council members strongly condemned the massacre and demanded an immediate investigation.
The EU's envoy, Mr Wolfgang Petritsch, said the expulsion was unprecedented, adding that it had cast a completely new light on the escalation. Russia promptly called on Belgrade "to refrain from carrying out this decision" on Mr Walker and dispatched its First Deputy Foreign Minister, Mr Alexander Avdeyev.
After barring the UN war crimes prosecutor, Ms Louise Arbour, from entering Kosovo to investigate the alleged massacre, Yugoslav authorities removed the bodies of 40 of the victims to the provincial capital Pristina. Later Belgrade affirmed that the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) "has no and cannot have any jurisdiction in Kosovo, given that the issue there is not one of armed conflict but of terrorism . . . [that the authorities] have the legitimate right to combat".
The six-nation Contact Group on former Yugoslavia is to meet in Brussels tomorrow to discuss the worsening crisis, the British Foreign Secretary, Mr Robin Cook, told parliament.
President Chirac is rethinking France's policy on Kosovo following the massacre, presidential aides said. Italy said key bases on its territory would be used if its NATO allies decided to strike, but the NATO Secretary General, Mr Javier Solana, said that would be the last resort.
NATO's supreme commander, Gen Wesley Clark, and Gen Klaus Naumann of NATO's military committee had planned to leave for Belgrade yesterday morning. But their plane sat on the ground in Belgium all day, awaiting word that Mr Milosevic would receive them.
Mrs Mary Robinson, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, has strongly condemned the slaughter and urged Yugoslav authorities to co-operate fully with investigators.