Serbian officials meanwhile were taking measures to try to halt an exodus of Serbian and Montenegrin refugees from Kosovo, following the withdrawal of Yugoslav troops and the security forces.

Nato forces entering Kosovo were described simply as "Western troops" by the Yugoslav state news agency Tanjug.

It said the soldiers were "both booed and cheered" as they moved along Macedonian roads heading for the border.

Macedonian police had to intervene when a group of mainly Macedonian youths threw stones at the convoys, the agency said, but added that outside Skopje on the ethnic Albanian-populated left bank of the Vardar, "the K-For troops" were warmly welcomed.

Other Tanjug dispatches continued in a similar vein, with factual reporting of the arrival of Russian "peacekeepers" and further references to "Western forces" or just "K-For".

'Technological facism'

But Belgrade radio used a more familiar tone in its report on the return from Kosovo of Yugoslav army units to the town of Kraljevo.

The radio praised the "heroic behaviour and committment" of the troops in the face of the "Nato aggressor".

"They were greeted with applause, as our new Kosovo heroes deserve," the radio said. Earlier it had condemned Western leaders for the campaign against Yugoslavia.

"Clinton, Blair, Chirac and Schroeder will go down in history as criminals for using power whose volume exceeded even their madness and unscrupulousness against a small, free and proud country," the radio said in a commentary on Sunday.

"Western leaders' computerised brains are programmed in such a way that they cannot think or feel anything human, but only kill, destroy like rabid beasts, with the only goal to check out the efficiency of their technological fascism," it said.

"Yugoslavia and its armed forces managed to triumph over even monsters such as these and saw the greatest moral collapse known to us - unprecedented in human history," it went on.

"But we had something that the criminals lacked: a heart and a soul, as well as unprecedented motivation, leading us to defend ourselves aginst these wild criminals."

Flight from Kosovo

Meanwhile, considerable attention was given to the situation in Kosovo, and the plight of Serbian and Montenegrin refugees.

Tanjug said two Serbian ministers were in Kosovo on Saturday urging people not to leave their homes. Their comments came as fears grew for the safety of Serbs following the Yugoslav pull-out.

According to Tanjug, Serbian Education Minister Jovo Todorovic said the authorities were doing everything to help the Serbs "survive and stay in the province" .

He said money would be allocated to develop and repair the university in Pristina and other schools and colleges, and that teachers in Kosovo would receive higher wages than their counterparts in the rest of Serbia as an incentive for them to stay.

Tanjug also said Serbian Science Minister Branislav Ivkovic visited the western town of Pec, where he insisted that " now that the worst was over, there was no reason for Kosovo-Metohija's Serbs and Montenegrins to leave their ancestral homes" .

His remarks were echoed by Serbian Socialist party official Radmilo Bogdanovic, who said the arrival of Russian troops in the province would motivate many people not to move out.

Nonetheless, the independent Montenegrin news agency Montena-fax said the number of "Serbs, Montengrins and Muslims" fleeing Kosovo was increasing.

According to police some 8,000 people had crossed into Montenegro alone by Sunday morning, with a further 2,000 expected during the course of the day.