Aside from Mrs Madeleine Albright's boast that the two delegations sat in the same room to be lectured by her, there was nothing the six-nation Contact Group on former Yugoslavia could point to as progress in the week-old Rambouillet peace conference yesterday - not even a commitment by the sides to negotiate face-to-face.
"Progress has been slower than we had hoped," the French Foreign Minister, Mr Hubert Vedrine admitted, adding that the contact group is determined "to intensify the pace of negotiations." Three mediators from the US, Russia, and Austria (representing the EU) have been running back and forth between the second floor of Rambouillet Castle, where the Serbs are ensconced, to the third floor where the Albanians live, since February 6th.
Officially, the foreign ministers of the contact group decided here yesterday to extend the negotiations between Serbs and ethnic Albanians for another week. Amid their hopes that the deadlock of the past week may be ending, the group which includes the US, Russia, France, Britain, Germany and Italy, set a firm deadline for completion of the talks by noon on February 20th.
"The parties are well aware that the threat of NATO air strikes remains real," Mrs Madeleine Albright, the US Secretary of State, said. Western negotiators have blamed the Serbs for the lack of progress in the talks, but a statement read by the Mr Vedrine said they would "hold both sides accountable if they fail to take this opportunity".
Earlier in the day, Mrs Albright met with the two delegations in Rambouillet Castle, in which they have been confined since negotiations started on February 6th. "Both sides realise that time is short and the killing must stop," she said. "I said there are two roads forward and one leads to chaos and killing and further disintegration of former Yugoslavia. The other possibility is one of decent relations with the people of Kosovo in which Kosovo Albanians would enjoy a high degree of autonomy and the other group's rights would be respected."
The two basic disputes - the Kosovars' demand for full independence rather than autonomy and the Serbs' rejection of an international peacekeeping force - remain intact. If she were still a professor of international relations, Mrs Albright said, she would tell them that concepts of sovereignty and the nation-state are shifting.
The Serb delegation, which includes 12 men and one woman, asked that hairdressers and manicurists be sent to the chateau. The Agence France Presse rebutted reports that vast amounts of alcohol are being consumed, quoting castle personnel as saying only 300 bottles of 1996 Bordeaux red, 76 bottles of white wine and eight bottles of Martell Cognac were drunk in the first six days.
An appendix on the proposed 30,000-strong peacekeeping force, drafted by NATO, has not yet been shown to the delegations and is expected to cause major difficulties with the Serb side. Mr Robin Cook, the British Foreign Secretary, said "the Russians still have reservations on the text on a military force." But it is also in Moscow's interest that an agreement be reached by next Saturday. If not, Moscow would be isolated - along, perhaps, with Paris - in opposing NATO military action.
Mrs Albright stressed there could be no "fudging" on the deadline, and that "without a strong international presence there is no agreement at all, which means a NATO-led peacekeeping force". In recent days, the Serb President, Mr Milan Milutinovic, and the Deputy Prime Minister, Mr Vojislav Seselj, have threatened "a European Vietnam" and warned NATO to "get the coffins ready" if they deploy troops in Kosovo. But Mr Vuk Draskovic, another Deputy Prime Minister, said in Paris that he was ready to accept NATO troops "if the accord on the autonomy of the province is within the framework of the borders of Serbia".
Mr Draskovic repeated Serb allegations of collusion between the Albanians and the US.
