A NATO war plane begins training exercises over Albania and Macedonia

• Milosevic travels to Moscow
• NATO maintains stance

AVIANO AIR BASE, Italy (CNN) -- NATO forces began air exercises over the southern Balkans on Monday in a show of force aimed at persuading Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic to ease his tough policies in Kosovo province.

Soon after the drill began, Interfax news agency reported that Russia was recalling its top NATO military envoy in protest. Moscow has strongly opposed any direct intervention in Yugoslavia and has been widely critical of NATO's post-Cold War role.

"This is an exercise intended to demonstrate the alliance's commitment to peace and stability in the region and the alliance's ability to project power," Lt. Gen. Michael Short, commander of NATO air forces in the alliance's southern Europe division, said at Aviano Air Base late Sunday.

Two U.S. F-16 jets took off from Aviano Air Base around 7:50 a.m. (1:50 a.m. EDT) to begin the exercises, codenamed Determined Falcon. Eighty NATO warplanes from 13 of the alliance's 16 nations were to take part, leaving from air bases in Italy, Greece, France, Germany, Britain and the USS Wasp in the Adriatic Sea. Support planes, including refueling tankers, already were in the air.

U.S. Defense Secretary William Cohen
Comments on the upcoming meeting between Milosevic and Yeltsin 306K/25 sec. AIFF or WAV sound
British Foreign Secretary Robin Cook
"We are not doing this (NATO exercise) because we want to intervene militarily. We are doing this because we want to stop the violence."
Russian Foreign Minister Yevgeny Primakov
"There seems to be the possibility for a peaceful resolution to this crisis which has flared up in Kosovo."

Only Iceland and Luxembourg, which have no air forces, and Canada, which could not deploy planes to Europe on such short notice, will not participate. Along with F-16s, aircraft being used in the exercise include F-18s, KC-135 tankers, and Marine Corps EA-6B early warning planes.

The planes will fly over the Adriatic Sea into the airspace of Albania and the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, returning in a huge clockwise swirl.

"That's a long wagon train," Short said.

Asked early Monday if he expected the aircraft to be picked up by Yugoslav ground radar, Short said, "It's very reasonable to say the aircraft will be tracked by Yugoslav early warning systems."

But he emphasized, "We will do nothing in this exercise to provoke a response from the federal republic of Yugoslavia."

The exercises came as fighting continued in Kosovo over the weekend, with three Kosovo Albanians and two Serbian policemen being killed in clashes Sunday.

More than 300 people have been killed in Kosovo since Yugoslavia launched a crackdown on the southern province's ethnic Albanian majority in March. Thousands have fled across the border into Albania and Macedonia, as well as the Yugoslav republic of Montenegro.

The air exercises also came as Milosevic prepared to meet with Russian President Boris Yeltsin in Moscow. Interfax quoted Russian Defense Ministry sources as saying Lt. Gen. Viktor Zavarzin, Moscow's top NATO envoy, would be back in the nation's capital by Tuesday -- and might possibly meet with Milosevic.

NATO defense ministers ordered the air exercises on Thursday during a meeting in Brussels. The ministers also ordered the alliance's military planners to begin looking at a wide range of options for future action, including direct intervention in Yugoslavia with air and ground forces.

"On Kosovo, let me be quite clear that NATO will not stand idly by. We will not allow a repeat of the situation of 1991 in Bosnia," NATO Secretary-General Javier Solana said in a speech in Warsaw Sunday.

Short would not say just how close the allied planes will come to the Yugoslav border. But Col. Emerson Gardner aboard the USS Wasp in the Adriatic said: "We will be close enough that the Serbs will know NATO will be there."

The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.