NATO's supreme commander, Gen Wesley Clark, gave a robust response yesterday to suggestions that the alliance might curb its bombing campaign following Russian warnings about the dangers of the war spreading.
"We're going to continue with the mission exactly as planned regardless of political and diplomatic atmospherics," he said.
Gen Clark's comments followed a flurry of exchanges between Moscow and Washington after the Communist speaker of the Russian parliament, Mr Gennady Seleznyov, claimed that President Yeltsin had ordered Russian missiles to target NATO states because of the campaign.
The claim was swiftly denied by the Kremlin and the US State Department, but that did not stop Mr Yeltsin emphasising Russia's anger. He warned NATO not to send ground troops into Yugoslavia and "make it their protectorate", adding: "We cannot permit that."
"I have already told NATO, the Americans, the Germans, don't push us towards military action since that will certainly lead to a European war or even a world war which is inadmissible," Mr Yeltsin said in comments last night on Russian television.
The White House said it appreciated Russian comments over several weeks indicating no wish to be drawn into the conflict. The Secretary of State, Ms Madeleine Albright, sought to assuage Russian anxieties in a discussion with the Foreign Minister, Mr Igor Ivanov.
The US said yesterday it had a report of the systematic rape of Kosovo women at a Yugoslav army camp and that about 20 of them had been killed. The charge, which the Pentagon said it was trying to confirm, was the first specific US allegation of such an atrocity in Kosovo.
Serb forces shelled Kosovo Liberation Army guerrillas, killing four, on the Albania-Kosovo border yesterday as a skirmish which began with machinegun exchanges escalated, OSCE officials and police said. The fighting began near the Padesh border post in the Tropoje district, some 300 km north of the capital Tirana, before spreading to the nearby Kamenica area.
Five explosions shook Belgrade late yesterday as thousands of volunteer "human shields" turned out to protect potential NATO targets in the Yugoslav capital, the Serbian media reported.
In Kosovo, Tanjug news agency said a transmitter of the Serbian official RTS television channel had been hit on Mount Goles, near Pristina, in a raid by NATO warplanes.