BELGRADE, Yugoslavia -- No progress was reported Tuesday following a second emergency meeting on Kosovo between a U.S. special envoy and the Yugoslav president, raising the likelihood of imminent NATO airstrikes.
The United Nations' humanitarian agency was preparing to evacuate its personnel from war-torn Kosovo. The office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees was awaiting orders to leave the southern Serbian province.The evacuation of the UNHCR and diplomatic personnel could come quickly because Slobodan Milosevic's ruling party Tuesday rejected the key Western demand of a Kosovo peace plan -- foreign troops to police it -- meaning NATO bombings could come quickly barring a last-minute reversal.
There was no official word on the results of more than two hours of talks Tuesday between Milosevic and special envoy Richard Holbrooke, who failed to change the Yugoslav president's position in talks Monday night.
In Washington, however, a senior Clinton administration official told The Associated Press on Tuesday that no real progress had been made. President Clinton's foreign policy advisers met to discuss their next moves.
NATO has threatened Milosevic with bombardment if he does not agree to a six-nation plan to provide some self-rule to the ethnic Albanians who make up 90 percent of Kosovo's population and to halt the latest offensive, which the allies consider a violation of cease-fire accords that Holbrooke worked out with Milosevic last October.
While there were preliminary reports that the Serb offensive in Kosovo may be slowing, Milosevic's rebuff of the self-rule plan, which includes the stationing of 28,000 peacekeepers, including 4,000 Americans, in Kosovo could force Clinton's hand on the bombing threat.
The declaration by Milosevic's party -- delivered during a session of the Serbian parliament -- appeared to all but slam the door on chances Yugoslavia will accept the peace plan.
"Holbrooke came to tell us either troops or bombing," Serbian President Milan Milutinovic told parliament Tuesday.
"We are not accepting foreign military troops on our territory under any excuse and at any price, even at the price of bombing," the general-secretary of Milosevic's Socialist Party, Gorica Gajevic, told an emergency session of the Serbian parliament.
Ratko Markovic, head of the Serbian delegation at failed peace talks in France, dismissed the Western-backed peace plan as invalid because it was signed only by the "separatist terrorist organization," referring to the rebel Kosovo Liberation Army.
Serb sources reported fighting Tuesday in the northern Podujevo area and in the rebel stronghold region of Drenica, the focus of a powerful offensive against separatist guerrillas by the estimated 40,000 Yugoslav forces in the southern Serbian province.
There also was fighting near Vucitrn in the north, the Albanian-run Kosovo Information Center said.
Holbrooke went to the presidential palace to meet with Milosevic again Tuesday morning after four hours of talks Monday. A U.S. source speaking on condition of anonymity said Holbrooke returned to the U.S. Embassy after the meeting, presumably for consultations with Washington.
Following Monday's talks, Holbrooke said the clashes in the province between government forces and the KLA "make it extra difficult to pursue peace."
Violence also escalated dangerously in Kosovo's capital, Pristina, with bomb attacks on two ethnic Albanian-owned cafes Monday night killing two people and seriously injuring four.
More than 2,000 people have been killed in over a year of fighting, and the U.N. refugee agency estimated some 240,000 people are currently displaced within Kosovo -- not counting 190,000 who already have left the province of 2 million people.
Dozens of Kosovo Albanians trying to flee into neighboring Macedonia were stranded at the border Tuesday, carrying their belongings in bundles, after being turned back by Macedonian authorities. Macedonia has been overwhelmed by more than 10,000 refugees.
The Senate was scheduled to take a key procedural vote Tuesday on legislation by GOP leaders aimed at prohibiting Clinton from using U.S. military power in the latest Balkans crisis without first getting congressional support.
Clinton was to meet Tuesday afternoon at the White House with top lawmakers.
"It's wrong the way we're approaching this," said Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Ted Stevens, R-Alaska. "The president should not use our military power to carry out negotiations."
Russian Prime Minister Yevgeny Primakov left for Washington Tuesday for meetings with Clinton. The Interfax news agency, citing unidentified sources, said Primakov would return to Moscow if NATO begins bombing Yugoslavia before he's scheduled to leave the United States on Saturday.
"It is against good sense," Primakov said of NATO strikes during a refueling stop in Shannon, Ireland. "We are firmly against this."