A Council of Europe delegation arrived in Pristina, capital of the troubled Serbian province of Kosovo yesterday, after holding talks with Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic in Belgrade.
After the meeting with the seven-member delegation, Mr Milosevic said the crisis in Kosovo was an internal Serbian affair and rejected attempts to "internationalise" it. However, the delegation understands that he would, under certain conditions, accept mediation by former Spanish premier Mr Felipe Gonzalez.
Western countries led by the United States have given Mr Milosevic two weeks to start talks with the Kosovo Albanians or risk tightened sanctions.
The delegation called on Kosovo Albanian leaders to join talks with the Serbian government representatives in Pristina, which they were boycotting for the second day yesterday. Earlier, tens of thousands of ethnic Albanians had demonstrated peacefully in Pristina, without police interference, against the recent police violence, in which at least 80 people died. The protest, organised by students and trade unions, was the second mass rally in four days.
Mr Ibrahim Rugova, the leader of the main ethnic Albanian party, the LDK, said yesterday that the police operation was still going on in mountain villages.
The Serbian Deputy Prime Minister, Mr Ratko Markovic, and his team waited in vain yesterday for Mr Rugova and other Albanian leaders to turn up in response to personal invitations to talks within the framework of the Serbian constitution.