The ministers, meeting today in Luxembourg, also announced immediate steps to promote stability in the region. These include military exercises in Macedonia and Albania, and help in patrolling their borders.

The BBC Defence Correspondent says Nato wants to increase pressure on the Yugoslav President, Slobodan Milosevic, to ensure a political solution to the crisis in Kosovo.

The military exercises, scheduled for August for Albania, and September, for Macedonia, are planned to be held under the Partnership for Peace banner.

A small Nato liaison office is being established in the Albanian capital, Tirana, to coordinate Nato assistance and there are plans to set up a Partnership for Peace training centre in Macedonia.

Kosovo's Albanians have been holding protests for weeks

Nato military planners have also been told to examine how the alliance might help monitors in the region from both the United Nations and the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), perhaps with reconnaissance aircraft.

And they will also plan for what Nato terms a preventive deployment of alliance troops in Macedonia and Albania should the crisis in Kosovo worsen.

Nato says that it will continue to monitor events in and around Kosovo and that it is ready to consider what it calls the military implications of further deterrent measures if the situation so requires.

The BBC correspondent says this is being interpreted as a veiled threat to assume a much greater military role should a catastrophe threaten.

But our correspondent adds that a direct Nato intervention would be such a complex operation that the threat may not carry much weight.