It would put huge strain on Britain’s military capacity to deploy such a force.
The Ministry of Defence said that a meeting had taken place, though it denied that it had officially discussed an invasion force or put a figure on Britain’s contribution to any such force. The Pentagon underlined that active consideration is being given to a peacekeeping force only. “There is no consensus for sending ground forces into Kosovo under other circumstances,” said a Pentagon spokesman.Thursday’s meeting, between the US, France, Italy, Germany and Britain, took place on the fringes of a gathering of European ministers in Bonn, and the presence of the US Defense Secretary, William Cohen, was not disclosed. General Wesley Clark, the Supreme Allied Commander in Europe, said that an invasion would take 150,000 troops, the New York Times reported. America, Germany and Italy have been adamant so far that a ground invasion could not be contemplated, but planning in Brussels and at Nato’s military headquarters in Mons has been under way for weeks.Publicly, Nato continues to insist that the air war is working. “I don’t care how tough that army is or how it tries to hide, no army can stand the continual losses day after day in a campaign of indefinite duration,” said Gen Clark yesterday. Nato aircraft launched another huge round of attacks yesterday, and Belgrade and Novi Sad were both left without electricity.

Strikes were also launched against Yugoslav targets on the coast of Montenegro.France and Germany called for a meeting of the Group of Eight nations to assess diplomatic progress after Friday’s visit to Belgrade by the Russian negotiator, Viktor Chernomyrdin. Although President Slobodan Milosevic was reported to have said he would accept the conditions for an end to the war laid down by the G8, Britain was cautious. “This shift by Milosevic shows the pressure is now beginning to tell on him,” said Robin Cook, the Foreign Secretary. “However, he has got to go beyond accepting principles to talking about real substance if he wants to prove he is serious.”A Belgrade court yesterday convicted two Australian aid workers and their Yugoslav colleague of spying and sentenced them to prison. Steven Pratt was sentenced to 12 years, Peter Wallace to four years and Branko Jelen received a six-year term. The two Australians were arrested when they crossed from Croatia into Yugoslavia, and border guards became suspicious of their laptop computers, files, and mobile telephones.FOCUS, PAGES 18-20.

IF ET phones home, or anywhere else for that matter, there’s every chance his call will be heard not just by scientists with a giant dish at their disposal, but by Joe Soap, on his home computer. When Seti (Search for Extra-terrestrial Intelligence), the California- based project, announced this month that it was making raw radio data from the most distant reaches of the galaxy available on the internet, nearly half a million people responded.
As of today, the massive task of analysing the material gathered by Seti’s experts – who have featured in the Hollywood sci-fi blockbusters Independence Day and Contact – has become the biggest computer project ever undertaken.Hundreds of thousands of people from around the world are downloading chunks of data from Seti’s radio telescope to search for signs of alien intelligence.It has a “screensaver” which gives everyone the chance to say they were the first to discover a message from an alien civilisation contacting the human race.The screensaver works through the calculations and e-mails the results back to Seti.”This is already the world’s largest supercomputer,” said Dan Werthimer, the Seti project scientist. “We have been surprised by the overwhelming support we have had from people. They have already done the equivalent of more than 2,600 years’ computing on a desktop PC in two weeks.”Can it succeed? “We’re still planning how to do this, really, and refining it,” said Dr Werthimer. “But I’m optimistic that over the next 50 to 100 years we will find evidence of extra-terrestrial life.”n You can join the search for ET at: http://setiathome.ssl. berkeley.edu/. JAVIER SOLANA, the Secretary General of Nato, is expected to be named this week as the European Union’s foreign and security chief, a powerful new post intended to forge a common policy in dealing with the rest of the world. Before the Kosovo conflict erupted, Mr Solana was known to have been expecting to step down after last month’s Nato heads of government summit in Washington.

He has no starting date, but European leaders are likely to agree his appointment as head of common foreign and security policy at the EU summit in Cologne on Friday. He is now the favourite, following widespread speculation about who “Mr CFSP” would be. Rudolf Scharping, the German Defence Minister, is being named by some as his replacement at Nato.
Mr Solana’s expected move, which Government sources said had already been privately agreed by member states and was now “99 per cent likely”, is a sign to the Americans that Europe does not want to distance itself from the US. There was some concern in the Clinton administration that the establishment of a new European defence capability, would undermine the transatlantic relationship. But the appointment of Mr Solana, who is close to the Americans, would demonstrate that the Europeans are keen for the new military wing to work closely with Nato.It would also be a ringing endorsement of Mr Solana, despite the growing controversy over a number of high profile blunders by Nato under his leadership. Another high-profile figure, Louise Arbour, the chief UN war crimes prosecutor, may also be departing.