THE first group of Kosovar refugees is due to arrive in Britain tomorrow, and the Scottish Refugee Council is firming up plans for housing those expected to be given sanctuary north of the Border.

There are no details yet on how many refugees are to be sent to Scotland or when they will arrive, but the Scottish Refugee Council will be meeting Glasgow councillors next week to finalise preparations for their accommodation.

A city council spokesman said yesterday: ''Nothing has been finalised, but the thinking at the moment is that they should all be kept together for mutual support.''

The United Nations High Commission for Refugees yesterday said a further 400 Kosovar refugees were being lined up to come to Britain. The refugee agency said it would be submitting a request to the Government in the next few days.

The announcement came as preparations to receive the first contingent of 250 refugees were speeded up after conditions in the war-torn region deteriorated further. The first plane load of people, including mothers with children, the elderly, and 18 people in need of medical care, was expected to arrive from Macedonia tomorrow instead of early next week.

The Refugee Council, responsible for co-ordinating arrangements for receiving the refugees, is still finalising plans for where they will live in Britain.

Mr Campbell Snoddy of the Scottish Refugee Council said: ''We don't have a time or location yet for refugees in Scotland, but it will not be as early as Sunday.''

The council has been advertising for staff to run reception centres and a statement said: ''The Scottish Refugee Council will be working to provide a safe and welcoming environment and sensitive and skilled services to help the refugees recover from their experiences.''

The group due to arrive in Britain tomorrow includes 18 people who are in need of medical aid and their dependants, and around 120 people deemed by the United Nations to be especially vulnerable.

Many of these are single women with children, very elderly people, or refugees suffering from acute war trauma. All are thought to have asked to be evacuated to the UK from the teeming refugee camps in Macedonia.

The Government was yesterday forced on to the defensive over its readiness to accept refugees after warnings from Labour backbench MP Ann Clwyd that it was too slow to respond.

Home Secretary Jack Straw said the policy being followed by the UK was the same as that of other European countries - although Germany has now taken in around 10,000 refugees.

''We have made it clear right from the start that ... the overwhelming focus of humanitarian relief has to be in the region around Kosovo, in Albania and Macedonia,'' he said.

''We have said that we will take some thousands of refugees from the area. We had already taken 10,000 before the war started. We have laid in extensive contingency plans, we have said we will respond to UNHCR requests whenever they were made.

''On the very day they made their first request we responded positively and we will continue to do so.''

Mr Straw said a mass evacuation from the region would play into the hands of Slobodan Milosevic by furthering his ethnic cleansing campaign.

Under current criteria, the Government is prepared to accept requests from the UNHCR to receive vulnerable refugees. Relatives of Kosovars already here might also be accepted later.

Meanwhile, Liberal Democrat leader Paddy Ashdown added his voice to those warning that Britain must start accepting more Kosovar refugees if it was to succeed in its struggle with President Milosevic.

Mr Ashdown, who has just returned from a five-day fact-finding trip to the Balkans, said that the flood of refugees into Macedonia was destabilising a country which was vital to Nato's war effort.

It was essential that Britain began playing its part in relieving the pressure that was now building on the pro-western government of Macedonia with its own volatile, ethnically-mixed population, he said.

If Nato ground troops were to be deployed in Kosovo, they would almost certainly have to go in from Macedonia and it was important to keep the government on side.

''One of the biggest factors in this war is becoming the instability in Macedonia,'' he said.

''For Milosevic, refugees are an instrument of war.

''We have to be prepared to win on the refugee battleground just as we have to be prepared to win on every other one.

''Frankly, our Government's capacity to be able to influence Macedonia is not currently being helped by the fact that Britain is being very, very laggardly in carrying the burden of refugees.''