Western threats of force have hardened positions on both sides of the Kosovo conflict

In this story:

• NATO renews threat of 'military option'
• Kosovo rebels announce breakaway assembly
• Facts about massacre remain murky
• Other sites and stories

PRISTINA, Yugoslavia (CNN) -- The most recent attempt by Western powers to force Yugoslavia and the Kosovo Albanians into direct peace talks -- this time by threatening rapid military action -- was met Tuesday by a hardening of positions from both sides in the conflict.

Western diplomats said Tuesday that key countries would meet Friday to issue a virtual summons for the two sides to begin negotiations within days on a plan for interim self-rule in Kosovo. That meeting would be preceded on Wednesday by a fresh warning of potential military action to Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic.

Five Albanians civilians were found dead Monday

But as the six-nation Balkans Contact Group was finalizing its plans to push for talks, the separatist Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) announced a major challenge to the leadership of the moderate politician favored by the West. That stance indicated they would reject any formula that falls short of full independence for Kosovo, a province of Yugoslavia's main republic, Serbia.

Yugoslav Deputy Prime Minister Vuk Draskovic, meanwhile, said he saw no point to a plan on interim self-rule. Instead, the international community should emphasize that Kosovo is part of Serbia, Yugoslavia's state news agency Tanjug quoted him as saying.

The defiance in Kosovo and Belgrade, the Yugoslav capital, came against the backdrop of renewed NATO military threats. NATO warned earlier in the day that "the military option will be used" in Kosovo if fighting between ethnic Albanian separatists and Serb security forces continues.

"Both sides must be made to understand that they've reached the limit," NATO Gen. Klaus Naumann, head of the alliance's military committee, told Germany's ZDF television.

Diplomats from the Contact Group have been struggling to find a resolution to the conflict, leading to the plan to meet Friday in Paris to demand that both sides begin negotiations.

Western diplomats said that the ethnic Albanians and Serbs would have 10 days to begin direct peace talks, or face military action.

"There is a determination to get an interim political settlement agreed by the end of February, under the threat of military force if necessary," a senior NATO diplomat said. "The idea is a Dayton-styled lockup under incredible international pressure."

Despite that pressure, the political situation in Kosovo grew muddier as the KLA announced plans Tuesday to establish a "constituent assembly," to rival that presided over by moderate Ibrahim Rugova.

The rebel statement, broadcast over Albanian state television and monitored in Kosovo's capital, Pristina, also demanded that Kosovo Albanian politicians begin transferring money donated by Albanians abroad to the KLA within 10 days or face unspecified measures in the "interests of the Albanian people."

The United States' envoy for Kosovo, Christopher Hill, and his European Union counterpart, Wolfgang Petritsch of Austria, were expected to meet KLA representatives in Kosovo on Wednesday to discuss the Contact Group's plan. The group is made up of the United States, Britain, France, Germany, Italy and Russia.

Talks between the Serbs and ethnic Albanians were provided for in the Oct. 12 agreement between Milosevic and U.S. envoy Richard Holbrooke, which ended seven months of intense fighting and the wholesale destruction of ethnic Albanian villages here.

Major powers fear fighting could explode across the province by spring unless a viable solution is found. Those fears were heightened by the discovery Jan. 16 of the bodies of 45 ethnic Albanians in Racak in what international peace monitors described as a massacre by Serb police.

The government claims the victims were rebels killed in battle and refused to allow a U.N. war crimes tribunal to investigate the Racak killings. But it did permit a team of Finnish pathologists to join Yugoslav experts in examining the bodies.

On Tuesday, the head of the Finnish forensics team said that the truth about the deaths may never be known because the bodies had been moved, first by ethnic Albanian civilians and later by Serb police.

Helena Ranta said this meant investigators could not rule out evidence-tampering or contamination.

"The problem as we see it: It is difficult to reconstruct the `chain of custody' (supervision) over the bodies," Ranta said. She said, however, that she was not accusing either side of fabricating evidence.

Yugoslavia's health minister, Miodrag Kovac, told reporters in Pristina that, based on the government's examination of 37 bodies so far, he could "only say that all the injuries were caused by firearms and from a distance" rather than at close range, execution-style.

Reuters contributed to this report.