"The air campaign combined with the intense diplomatic pressure is working", a high-level NATO source said with confidence yesterday. "Milosevic is cracking. He has his escape route worked out and all that remains now is for him to decide when."
The source said that "South Africa has indicated he can go there, and our intelligence reports that is the way he is thinking and planning."
That a ground force will enter Kosovo is certain and plans are advanced in preparation for it - but only in "a permissive environment when all 19 countries have decided on the precise timing," NATO spokesman Mr Jamie Shea said. That permissive environment demands that the killing stops and the Serbian forces are seen to be leaving Kosovo. "We are not sending people in to fight in Kosovo but as a peacekeeping force," Mr Shea insisted.
Whether Mr Viktor Chernomyrdin, President Yeltsin's special envoy, can persuade President Slobodan Milosevic to accept those conditions remains to be seen. But NATO says that time is running out for decision-making and Mr Milosevic is in a vice between the destruction of his armoured capacity and a concerted diplomatic determination to find a way to end the conflict.
Gen. Walter Jertz reported that the armed capacity of Serbian troops in the field was still functioning and dangerous but he claimed NATO had destroyed 31 per cent of all Serb heavy forces in Kosovo. Once 50 per cent is gone, it would not be possible for the troops to function any more. "That will be sooner rather than later," he said.
Already, desertions are becoming common as the units break up because of the loss of tanks, artillery, mortars and surface to air missiles, NATO claims. This makes it impossible for the Serb army to continue to back up the special police and the para-militaries.
As they break up into smaller units they are harassed by the KLA, who pick them off one by one. "They do not have enough sleep or food and their morale is bad," Gen. Jertz said. NATO does not feel that a ceasefire at this point would be useful. "We are not going to offer carrots," Mr Shea insisted. "Milosevic must have no way out but to accept the conditions."
Once the conditions are met, a ground force can be deployed quickly. "Joint Guardian", the original peacekeeping plan for Kosovo prepared in October, has been revised by SHAPE, which has sent the plan to the military committee. It has still to be approved by the NATO Council.
On Tuesday in Geneva, UNHCR and NATO worked together on a framework for the return of the refugees to Kosovo. The meeting estimated that 580,000 people are displaced within Kosovo, 130,000 are still living in their homes, 804,000 are in the neighbouring countries and 170,000 elsewhere in the world.
These figures account for 1.6 million of a total population before the crisis of 1.9 million, to be returned to Kosovo.
Four people were killed and 19 injured when NATO missiles hit the town of Gnjilane in Kosovo yesterday, Yugoslav media reported in Belgrade.
The reports said three of the victims were working in the restaurant of an agricultural company when it and buildings nearby were bombed at around 10.15 a.m. (local time). State news agency Tanjug insisted there were no military or police facilities in the area.
Four people were badly injured when a missile hit the Hotel Park in Pec, western Kosovo, the agency said. Ethnic Albanian villages in south-west and central Kosovo were also hit by missiles which destroyed dozens of houses. So was a prison in the town of Istok, the agency said. There was no immediate independent confirmation of the attacks.
NATO said in Brussels its warplanes had destroyed six Yugoslav aircraft on the ground during the night but added that only 58 of the planned 425 sorties had been flown.