NATO has said it is sending warships to the Adriatic Sea after the Yugoslav President, Mr Slobodan Milosevic, refused to back down in the Kosovo crisis.
At the same time, the alliance said yesterday it was cutting to 48 hours from 96 its readiness period for executing possible air strikes against Yugoslav military targets.
NATO announced the "precautionary" moves five days after the alleged massacre by Serbian security forces of 45 ethnic Albanian villagers in the Serb province of Kosovo.
Gen Wesley Clark, the alliance's supreme commander, told NATO ambassadors that Mr Milosevic had refused to heed calls for restraint during seven hours of talks in Belgrade on Tuesday.
"We were . . . not surprised but disappointed by the very stubborn and obdurate reaction we encountered in Belgrade," Gen Clark told journalists.
In Bonn, an official of the ethnic Albanian Kosovo Liberation Army said it would resume full-scale fighting if NATO failed to stop Serb attacks. "There are plenty of young men who are ready to pick up guns and fight," said Mr Sabri Kicmari.
Some 2,000 people were killed and 250,000 made homeless last year in a Serbian crackdown in Kosovo, where independence-minded ethnic Albanians outnumber Serbs by nine to one.
NATO sources said the Standing Naval Force Mediterranean would be sent to Italy's Adriatic port of Brindisi and NATO's Strike Force South, including the USS Enterprise battle group, would move from the Aegean Sea into the Adriatic.
NATO was also stepping up contingency plans to evacuate 800 international monitors in Kosovo led by an American, Mr William Walker, whom Belgrade has ordered out of the country by tonight.
The Norwegian Foreign Minister, Mr Knut Vollebaek, chairman of OSCE, the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe, said however he had advised Mr Walker to stay in Kosovo, despite the order.
He said it would be an "outrageous provocation" for Mr Milosevic to eject him forcibly.
NATO has renewed threats of air strikes against Yugoslav targets if Mr Milosevic does not fulfil pledges to seek a peaceful solution to the Kosovo conflict. However, diplomats said NATO still hoped to avoid the need for such action.
"We're not on the brink of military action. I don't think anyone in NATO wants to bomb him, unless he really forces us to," a senior western diplomat said.
Britain said the six-nation Contact Group, which also includes the US, Russia, France, Germany and Italy, would meet in London tomorrow to discuss the crisis.
By yesterday, Serbian police had withdrawn their weapons from around the site of last week's killings, but troops could still be seen moving in woods above the village of Racak.
An anti-aircraft gun, which had been placed on Monday on a hill above Racak, had disappeared. Signs warning of landmines had been placed beside a track leading to the hill.
In Moscow, the Russian parliament, the Duma, passed a resolution urging both sides in the Kosovo conflict to show restraint and resume talks.
Russia is a traditional Serb ally and parliament has often backed Belgrade in Balkan crises. It lamented that the world community was frequently too quick to blame the Serbs, adding that any NATO military action against Serbia would only make things worse.
The Russian First Deputy Foreign Minister, Mr Alexander Avdeyev, held talks with Mr Milosevic in Belgrade yesterday. The official news agency Tanjug said they condemned "terrorist activities" and called for a political solution in Kosovo.
The UN chief war crimes prosecutor, Ms Louise Arbour, said she would press on with her investigation of the Racak killings despite Yugoslavia's decision to bar her from the site.
The head of a Finnish forensic team invited by the OSCE to take part in autopsies on the bodies said she had urged Serbian authorities to halt the post-mortems until vital X-ray equipment could be brought in. Dr Helena Ranta and her team are due to travel to Kosovo today.
In the Kosovo regional capital, Pristina, however, officials said that five out of a total of 40 bodies had already been examined. The head of the Yugoslav forensic team said there were no signs any of the victims had been executed.
That contradicted the evidence of the international monitors, who said at the weekend that many villagers had been shot in cold blood at close range.