President Clinton has warned President Slobodan Milosevic not to harm the three US soldiers facing a "military trial" in Kosovo. He also re-affirmed US determination to continue NATO air strikes against Yugoslavia.
US spokesmen said any attempt to put the three servicemen on trial would be "ridiculous" and a violation of international law, as American public opinion was angered by the parading of the prisoners on Serbian television.
Meanwhile, the Kosovo Liberation Army yesterday said the proposed peace deal for the province, which NATO is hoping to force on the Serbs through bombing, is dead, with independence now the only option.
Mr Jakub Krasniqi, a member of the KLA negotiating team at the French talks, said in Tirana that the present "ethnic cleansing" of Kosovo's Albanians by Serbs would make it impossible to implement the Rambouillet peace agreement, which calls on Serbs and Albanians to live side-by-side in the province.
He brushed aside a call for peace talks made by the ethnic Albanian president, Mr Ibrahim Rugova, who is in Belgrade, apparently under arrest.
"The statements he has made are either extracted by force, or he was afraid. But if he has decided this then he has committed an act of high treason," said Mr Krasniqi. There is considerable confusion about the real position of Mr Rugova. Serbian TV showed him calling for an end to NATO bombings and meeting with Mr Milosevic yesterday, but the German magazine Der Spiegel quoted him as asking NATO to send in ground troops in an interview conducted on Monday.
With KLA units running low on ammunition, Mr Krasniqi said commanders in Kosovo hope that NATO attacks on tanks and artillery positions will act as air support for KLA units.
President Clinton had, in an earlier interview, said it would not be possible to accede to Pope John Paul's request for an Easter suspension of the bombing. "We can't observe Easter and honour the resurrection of Christ by allowing him [Milosevic] another free day to kill more innocent civilians," he said.
Repeating his opposition to sending ground forces into Kosovo, Mr Clinton said: "The thing that bothers me about introducing ground troops into a hostile situation. . . is the prospect of never being able to get them out."
Regarding the captured US soldiers, President Clinton declared that "there was absolutely no basis for them to be taken. There is no basis for them to be held. There is certainly no basis for them to be tried." He went on: "President Milosevic should make no mistake; the United States takes care of its own."
The State Department is insisting that the soldiers who were patrolling the border between Macedonia and Kosovo were abducted illegally. The Clinton Administration has reacted with irritation to articles in both the New York Times and the Washington Post that NATO had gone ahead with air strikes in the face of warnings from intelligence agencies that they would put the Kosovan population at much greater risk of Serb atrocities.
The Russian President, Mr Boris Yeltsin, appealed for an emergency meeting of the foreign ministers of the Group of Eight industrialised nations on the Yugoslav crisis, as Russian warships prepared to leave for the Mediterranean.
On the borders of Kosovo, the refugee crisis continued to worsen. A poll in the Guardian today suggests that two thirds of British voters now support the use of ground troops to stop Serbian "ethnic cleansing."