G8 awaits Russian response on Kosovo resolution

Foreign ministers from the Group of Eight, made up of the seven leading industrialised nations and Russia, were confident last night that they will agree a United Nations Security Council resolution on Kosovo when talks resume this morning.

"I am sure we will have a resolution tomorrow and it will be a good resolution," said Germany's Foreign Minister, Mr Joschka Fischer.

Yesterday's meeting at a hilltop palace outside Bonn dragged on for eight hours, almost six hours longer than originally planned. Western sources suggested that a draft resolution was close to agreement but that the Russian delegation needed to consult President Yeltsin on a number of key points.

The talks, aimed at rescuing the stalled peace plan for Kosovo broke up last night, as NATO continued its bombing campaign against Yugoslavia, resuming aerial attacks on the Belgrade area with at least 11 explosions reported near the city around midnight.

A meeting of the Security Council called in New York last night was abruptly cancelled pending the results of today's round of talks, which will be held in Cologne.

While the foreign ministers talked, the standoff between NATO commanders and their Yugoslav counterparts showed no sign of being resolved. There were low-level contacts between the two sides during the day but the talks about a Serb troop withdrawal that broke down early yesterday were not resumed.

The NATO spokesman, Dr Jamie Shea, claimed that the talks broke down because the Yugoslav side was attempting to renege on the terms of the agreement brokered with Belgrade last week by Finnish President Martti Ahtisaari and the Russian envoy, Mr Viktor Chernomyrdin.

There was no sign yesterday of a Serbian withdrawal from Kosovo as Serb shelling into Northern Albania continued with attacks on a number of towns and villages in the region of Pashtrik where a battalion of KLA troops have assembled. NATO attacks intensified after a few relatively quiet days and the Yugoslav media claimed that three people were killed in an attack near the town of Boljevac.

The main stumbling blocks in the G8 foreign ministers' talks yesterday appeared to centre on the sequence of events leading up to the deployment of an international peacekeeping force in Kosovo.

Russia is adamant that no foreign troops should enter Kosovo without a UN mandate and called on NATO to stop bombing immediately as a gesture of goodwill. For its part, the Western alliance insists that, although a UN mandate is desirable, its troops are ready to enter Kosovo without one. NATO also demands that Serbian forces must start to withdraw from Kosovo before the bombing could stop.

Under a French proposal, which has the support of Germany and Britain, a draft UN Security Council resolution would be sent to New York for immediate approval. The Serbian military withdrawal from Kosovo, the end of NATO's bombing campaign and the passage of the Security Council resolution would then take place almost simultaneously.

Mr Ahtisaari flew to Beijing last night in an effort to persuade China to support a Security Council resolution on Kosovo. If today's talks are successful, such a resolution could be passed as soon as tonight.