BELGRADE, Yugoslavia -- A special U.S. envoy declared talks with Yugoslavia's president a failure Tuesday and said he was returning to NATO headquarters. Allied airstrikes appeared imminent.
Richard Holbrooke said two days of talks with Slobodan Milosevic had not yielded the breakthrough the West had hoped for and that he was leaving Belgrade to consult with NATO officials in Brussels, Belgium, before returning to Washington.Holbrooke described the situation over Kosovo, where war the past year has left more than 2,000 people dead, as "the bleakest since we began this effort almost four years ago."
Holbrooke said Milosevic had not agreed to any of the measures the allies were seeking to bring peace to the region.
He said negotiators had sought a promise of two things -- stopping the fighting and implementation of the Rambouillet agreements signed last week in France by the ethnic Albanians.
"Neither commitment was forthcoming," Holbrooke said, adding that he, U.S. envoy Christopher Hill and other Western diplomats would be leaving right away for consultations with NATO officials.
Earlier, the United Nation's humanitarian agency prepared to evacuate its personnel from war-torn Kosovo as did most embassies.
Holbrooke said he stayed in Belgrade overnight and saw Milosevic Tuesday to make sure the Yugoslav president understood what was at stake, including NATO bombings. "He assured me as I left this morning that he fully understood what our government and NATO allies were saying," Holbrooke said.
In London, British Prime Minister Tony Blair gave an impassioned plea before the House of Commons about NATO attacks in Kosovo, saying 25,000 people had been made homeless in recent days and 1 million refugees were in European Union countries after fleeing the former Yugoslavia.
"We have no other choice but to de- ploy the means that we have prepared," Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder said in Germany. "We will do that, and we will do it as long as it takes for the Yugoslav president to return to the basis of humane conduct and international law."
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 American troops, in Kosovo has forced the West's hand on the bombing threat.
Earlier today, a declaration by Milosevic's ruling party -- delivered during a session of the Serbian parliament -- appeared to slam the door on chances Yugoslavia would accept the peace plan.
"Holbrooke came to tell us either troops or bombing," Serbian President Milan Milutinovic told parliament.
"We are not accepting foreign military troops on our territory under any excuse and at any price, even at the price of bombing," said Gorica Gajevic, general-secretary of Milosevic's Socialist Party.
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.
Houses in at least five northern villages were burned by Serb forces, according to the rebel agency Kosova Press.
In Kosovo's capital, Pristina, bomb attacks on two ethnic Albanian-owned cafes Monday night killed two people and seriously injuring four.
President Clinton met with lawmakers at the White House Tuesday to seek support for military action. Accusing Serb troops of terrorizing and murdering civilians in the province, Clinton said, "We have to take a stand now. If we don't do it now we will have to do it later."
In a speech to the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employes, Clinton said unless Serb troops were stooped a bigger offensive could start. "If you don't stand up to brutality and the killing of innocent civilians you invite them to do more," he said.
And yet, Clinton said, he did not like to use military force. But, he added, "We have tried to do everything we could to solve this peacefully."
After meeting with his national security advisers, Clinton gathered key members of Congress in the White House residence to state his opposition to an effort in the Senate to block funds for the NATO mission. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, R-Texas, said after the meeting that lawmakers would alter the funding proposal.
"There will be, probably, a different kind of amendment," Hutchison said. "It becomes a different issue when action becomes imminent. While many people may disagree with the president's policies, I would not want Mr. Milosevic to get the impression that (U.S. forces) may not get full support."
Sen. Bob Kerrey, D-Neb., said he has serious concerns that getting involved in Kosovo -- coupled with other U.S. deployments in Bosnia, South Korea and Iraq -- would stretch military resources too thin.
"There's only a certain number of things we can do. I would have preferred to say in this instance to the Europeans, 'This is one you're going to have to do,' " Kerrey said. Still, Clinton "has made the case to me so I'll support him."