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March 29, 1999
Web posted at: 2:06 p.m. EST (1906 GMT)

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The Clinton administration on Monday welcomed Russia's diplomatic efforts to resolve the Kosovo crisis, but said the only way to stop NATO airstrikes against Yugoslavia would be for President Slobodan Milosevic to accept a U.S.-brokered peace plan.

President Boris Yeltsin ordered several top leaders, including Prime Minister Yevgeny Primakov, Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov and Defense Minister Igor Sergeyev to fly to Belgrade on Tuesday for talks with Milosevic on finding a political end to the crisis.

While U.S. officials wished the Russians success, "NATO will continue air operations until such time as President Milosevic halts his offensive (against ethnic Albanians in Kosovo) and commits to a settlement based on the Rambouillet accords," said State Department spokesman James Rubin.

Rambouillet, a town near Paris, is where leaders of Kosovo's ethnic Albanian majority agreed earlier this month to a peace plan that would grant Kosovo autonomy but not immediate independence.

Milosevic, whose forces have cracked down for more than a year on those he calls Albanian "terrorists," objects to a peace plan provision calling for NATO peacekeeping troops in Kosovo.

NATO authorized the airstrikes last week after Milosevic refused to call off the attacks.

Rubin calls Kosovo Albanian's stories of atrocities by Serbs "credible"

On related matters, Rubin said:

• Refugees continue to stream out of Kosovo and into neighboring areas. He said at least 60,000 had entered Albania "in the last 48 hours, according to the U.N., and to a lesser extent into Montenegro and Macedonia."

• Reports of killings and mass expulsions of Kosovo Albanians "continue to accumulate" and are "credible."

• Washington was "in close contact" with Russian authorities investigating Sunday's attack at the U.S. Embassy in Moscow. A gunman, who remains at large, sprayed the building with automatic gunfire in an attack apparently linked to Russian protests against NATO airstrikes. No one was hurt and the embassy was open for business on Monday.

President Clinton, who went to the Camp David presidential retreat in Maryland on Sunday, returned to Washington late Monday morning for briefings by his international policy advisers.

He said nothing to waiting reporters as he stepped off a helicopter onto the White House lawn.

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