Lamenting a "grave moment for the international community", the secretary-general of the United Nations, Kofi Annan, last night expressed thinly disguised frustration that Nato had gone forward with its air strikes against Serbia without deferring first to the UN Security Council for specific authorisation.
Speaking at the start of an emergency meeting of the council called by Russia, Mr Annan laid the primary blame for the crisis on the authorities in Belgrade who, he said, "have persisted in their rejection of a political settlement, which would have halted the bloodshed in Kosovo and secured an equitable peace".
But Mr Annan was unable to hide his disappointment at the manner in which his own organisation had been sidelined by Nato. "The Security Council has primary responsibility for maintaining international peace and security - and this is explicitly acknowledged in the North Atlantic Treaty," he said.
Yugoslavia accused the United States and its allies of creating an artificial humanitarian disaster in Kosovo so that Nato could throw its weight around and justify its existence on the eve of its 50th anniversary. Shortly before yesterday's bombing onslaught began, Vladislav Jovanovic, Yugoslavia's UN representative, implicitly threatened to take the war beyond Yugoslav borders, saying that countries involved in "aggression" or which allowed their territory to be used for "aggression" should recognise the seriousness of those acts. But he repeated several times that Yugoslavia was "a peace-loving country that does not want war", while holding out the prospect of a political settlement even at that late stage.
Moscow is expected to use the council over the coming days as a forum to voice its own anger at an action it considers to be illegal. Russia will argue that the Nato action was in violation of international law because there are no UN resolutions giving it specific backing. "The Security Council cannot remain silent," Sergei Lavrov, the Russian ambassador to the UN, said last night.
The first Nato bomb to crater Yugoslav soil will go down in history as the moment when Russia realised exactly how far it had fallen since it bestrode the world as a super-power counterbalancing the might of the US. The alliance's refusal to listen to Moscow's pleas to spare its Slavic cousins marks a new low in the ambivalent relationship with the US. Russia finds itself cast not as an enemy but as a sponging lightweight. Kosovo has turned Russian reservations about the West into concrete resentment and deep suspicion likely to influence policy for years.
Yesterday in Moscow outrage echoed across the political spectrum, moderated only by the humiliating recognition that Russia must turn again to the West for loans. After 11th-hour calls to the US President, Bill Clinton, and Jacques Chirac of France, President Boris Yeltsin appeared on television to appeal to Nato to stay its hand.
Russia was expected to table a resolution last night condemning the air raids and asking Nato to end its operations.Ambassador Lavrov faced an uphill task, in part because several members of the council also belong to Nato, which has launched the strikes. They are the US, Canada, Britain, France and the Netherlands. Other member countries considered unlikely to share Russian's anger were Slovenia, which feels little love for Serbia, and also Bahrain, which has a natural sympathy for the Muslim Kosovars.
Nato capitals would clearly would have preferred some imprimatur from the Security Council. But diplomats in New York privately noted that tabling such a resolution was always ruled out because of the near certainty of vetoes from Russia and perhaps also China.
The net result is that the council finds itself on the sidelines on this crisis. Whereas its deliberations were of some importance in determining international handling of Saddam Hussein in Iraq, on the Kosovo issue it has had no weight and no obvious role to play. David Usborne and Phil Reeves
Yugoslavia - which has lost four of its pre-1990 republics to ethnic breakaways and now consists only of Serbia and the smaller Montenegro - last night saw the latter distancing itself from the policies of President Slobodan Milosevic.
Montenegro's President, Milo
Djukanovic, speaking on television from
the capital Podgorica, urged Mr
Milosevic to reverse his policy which
leads to "collective sufferings of
innocents and endangers the survival of
the country".
Mr Djukanovic said Nato missiles hit
his country, causing casualties and
damage to military targets. "These are
the tragic consequences of an
irrational policy of confrontation with
the entire world," he insisted,
referring to Mr Milosevic's rejection
of the Kosovo peace plan. "This policy
has led us into a dangerous adventure,
the price of which is peace and the
lives of Montenegrin citizens."
He said Montenegro was blameless.
"Force will not bring peace, neither to
Kosovo, nor to Serbia nor Yugoslavia. I
appeal to all in the country and the
international community to return to a
peaceful agreement on Kosovo," he said.
"Our future is not in confrontation
with the entire world and therefore I
demand from Milosevic to halt the
policy which has led to collective
suffering of innocents and endangered
the survival of the country."
He asked the international community to
"refrain from further airstrikes in
Montenegro and Yugoslavia".
Belgrade's ambassador in Moscow,
Borislav Milosevic - brother of the
Serb President - said the air strikes
would open the way for renewed military
co-operation with Russia.
The Foreign Minister, Igor Ivanov, has already hinted that Moscow might push for the lifting of the international arms embargo against Belgrade. The governing council of Russia's State Duma, the lower house of parliament, is due to meet later today to fix a date for an emergency session of the chamber.
