AMSTERDAM (Reuters) - The U.N. war crimes tribunal has indicted Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic for war crimes and issued an arrest warrant for him, a tribunal source said Wednesday.

The indictment, for crimes allegedly committed in Kosovo, will be announced Thursday by Louise Arbour, chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Tribunal for former Yugoslavia, the source added.

Western diplomats said the indictment, the first of a head of state in office, marked a major development in the Kosovo conflict as it closed the door on Milosevic's efforts to negotiate an end to the conflict and boost his standing at home.

NATO planes earlier blasted targets near Kosovo's main border crossing with Albania as the U.N. refugee agency said the number of people pouring out of the shattered province could reach one million.

In Moscow, U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott held several hours of talks with Russia's Balkan envoy, Viktor Chernomyrdin, and EU mediator Martti Ahtisaari in an effort to narrow differences on Kosovo and present Milosevic with a common set of demands.

``They were good talks and they are going to continue in the morning,'' Talbott said after returning to his hotel.

The head of a U.N. humanitarian mission to Yugoslavia said NATO's bombs had caused huge damage but could not explain or justify the exodus of refugees from Kosovo.

NATO says Serbian forces have driven over a million ethnic Albanians from their homes in Kosovo, forced several hundred thousand to flee the country and killed an unknown number. Belgrade says the refugees are fleeing NATO air strikes.

The alliance began bombing Yugoslavia on March 24 to try to compel Milosevic to withdraw his forces from Kosovo, let in an international NATO-led force to supervise the return of refugees and give the Serbian province autonomy.

Wednesday NATO aircraft carried out one of their heaviest attacks to date on targets near the Morina border crossing with Albania, through which several hundred thousand refugees have passed since the NATO bombing campaign began.

Witnesses saw at least eight explosions in hills around the crossing, and Albanian border police said intensive small-arms fire could be heard inside Kosovo as Yugoslav troops clashed with members of the rebel Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA).

Serb media said two children were killed and one wounded in one NATO air raid, and reported numerous bombing attacks throughout southern Serbia, the targets including the third biggest city of Nis and the Kosovo capital Pristina.

Western diplomats said Milosevic's indictment leaves him no choice but to give in to NATO's demands or go on fighting.

Yugoslav analysts said he had wanted direct talks with the West to boost his political standing at home, and that one of his main concerns had been to obtain a pledge of immunity from prosecution for war crimes.

One Belgrade analyst said the tribunal's decision showed the West really wanted to oust Milosevic from power, seeing him as a threat to the future stability of the volatile Balkans.

Chernomyrdin had been expected to travel to Belgrade Thursday for his fourth round of talks with Milosevic since NATO began its air strikes, but Wednesday evening Talbott appeared to cast doubt on this idea.

``Is he going to Belgrade? All I know is that he is meeting us in the morning,'' Talbott told Reuters.

In Macedonia, more than 6,000 Kosovo refugees poured across the border between Tuesday evening and early Wednesday morning, and U.N. refugee agency workers at the Blace crossing point said thousands more might be waiting on the Serbian side.

Macedonian President Kiro Gligorov said his country could not cope with more than 200,000 refugees and that EU nations would have to take in more refugees if they kept leaving Kosovo.

He told the French daily Le Monde that more than 300,000 refugees had flocked to Macedonia or passed through since the NATO bombing campaign began on March 24.

UNHCR special envoy Dennis McNamara said the refugee agency was preparing for a total of one million refugees to stream out of Kosovo into neighboring countries. ``That's our planning figure...and we may have to go higher,'' he said in Macedonia.

In Belgrade, Sergio Vieira de Mello, heading a 10-day U.N. humanitarian mission, said the NATO air strikes had created a ''calamitous situation'' for civilians, disrupting social services as well as causing physical and material damage.

But what he had seen in Kosovo could not be the result of the actions of a few people outside official control, he said.

``Threats, violence, destruction and burning of private homes, clear signs that people left in a panic, in terror, cannot be attributable only to the irrational or insane behavior of... small irresponsible groups acting outside the law,'' he said.

At NATO headquarters in Brussels, a spokesman accused Milosevic's government of cracking down on demonstrators in southern Serbia who are calling for an end to the conflict.

General Walter Jertz said authorities were ``using strong-arm tactics to keep the people quiet,'' including banning demonstrations, threatening loss of work, and warning recruits to report or face court martial.

NATO Supreme Commander General Wesley Clark said in a radio interview the alliance would maintain its military pressure and dismissed any chance of a pause in the bombing campaign.

In Rome, Italian Prime Minister Massimo D'Alema said a ground invasion of Kosovo would be a ``quantum leap'' in the conflict and would require a U.N. Security Council resolution. But he said he believed peace was both ``close and possible.''

***< now it really looks like the sh*t will hit the fan >*****

-- Rickjohn (rickjohn1@yahoo.com), May 26, 1999

Answers

DRUDGE REPORT HEADLINE: Clinton may send 90,000 troops to Kosovo...breaking news.

-- Mad Monk (madmonk@hawaiian.net), May 26, 1999.

Remember reading Slobobitch was a war criminal a couple years ago ...

No ground troops = no sex? Didn't anybody teach the meaning of NO ? Guess "is" is even more basic. Remedial. No remediating.

-------------------- Headlines-----------------------------------
President Clinton is now ready to consider a full scale land war against Serb forces in Kosovo, sending up to 90,000 combat troops from America, if no peace settlement emerges within the next three weeks, the LONDON TIMES is reporting on Thursday...
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NATO SET TO BOMB YUGOSLAVIA'S CIVILIAN TELEPHONE AND COMPUTER NETWORKS... ------------------------------------------------------------------
Got heartburn?

xxxxxxxx xxxxxxxx xxxxxxxx xxxxxxxx xxxxxxxx xxxxxxxx xxxxxxxx xxxx

-- Leska (allaha@earthlink.net), May 26, 1999.

The good news for Milosevic is that he'll be tried in the U.S. Senate. . .

-- Johnnie Cochran (jjbeck@recycler.com), May 26, 1999.

Isn't the bombing of aspirin factories, hospitals, foreign embassies, and civilian television stations a war crime too?

-- coprolith (coprolith@rocketship.com), May 26, 1999.

I have an idea of how to end this war. Milosevic and Clinton should sumo wrestle to the death. If they somehow both die, the whole world would win.

-- Mr. Adequate (mr@adequate.com), May 27, 1999.

Quick!

Somebody get BJ Clinton a bimbo before this goes any further!!

-- Anonymous99 (Anonymous99@Anonymous99.xxx), May 27, 1999.

By indicting Milosevic, Nato and their puppet War Crimes Tribunal have GUARANTEED that American soldiers will lose their lives in a ground war in the Balkans. There can be no other outcome, as now Milosevic has no other options but to fight to the death.

Look for Russia to weigh in soon after the invasion starts, as well as their new friends, the Communist Chinese (in case you didn't know, the Sino-Russian border is now the longest unguarded border in the world).

Most folks here will see a bright flash....

-- klm (klm@nowhre.not), May 27, 1999.