THE Kosovo peace talks were billed as negotiations, but both Serbian and ethnic Albanian delegations complain they are at the receiving end of an international monologue with no dialogue in sight.
"We have been presented with texts by the international community and are basically expected to sign on the dotted line," an Albanian adviser said, who declined to be named.
The six-nation Contact Group has imposed a two-week limit on the warring parties to reach a deal and with less than four days to go before the deadline expires, the troika of mediators still has not handed over proposals on security or military issues.
Nor have they formally responded to the delegates' proposals on the political or economic reconstruction of Kosovo.
"For us Kosovo is not a cultural problem or an economic problem but a political and military problem. We must be allowed to negotiate these points fully," said Mr Pleurat Sejdiu, a political representative for the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA).
Diplomats reply that as far as key military questions are concerned, such as the future role of the KLA and withdrawal of Serb forces from Kosovo, there is not much to talk about.
"There is a tiny amount of room for manoeuvre on the margins," one Western diplomat said. Another was more forthright. "(Our proposals) are non-negotiable," he said.
This is a far cry from the 1995 Bosnian peace negotiations in Dayton, Ohio, when a team of mediators battled for three weeks to secure a deal, arguing over every tiny detail.
A senior American general was also on hand to help work out the terms of reference for a NATO peacekeeping force in Bosnia. At Rambouillet there is no such figure and the eventual deployment of NATO troops to Kosovo is being decided elsewhere.
And unlike at Dayton, there has been no serious face-to-face dialogue between the Serbs and Albanians, just mediators shuttling continuously between separate floors of the Rambouillet chateau where the two delegations are housed. "There are no talks at Rambouillet .. . why did we come here?" the Serbian President, Mr Milan Milutinovic, asked last week.
One of the major problems faced by the chief mediator, Mr Chris Hill, a veteran of the Dayton marathon, is that the decision-maker on the Serb side, the Yugoslav President, Mr Slobodan Milosevic, is still in Belgrade.
Mr Hill flew to Yugoslavia on Tuesday to meet Mr Milosevic, underlining the weakness of the 13-member Serbian delegation in France, which includes a host of representatives from ethnic minorities and only four reasonably influential politicians.
Meanwhile, the ethnic Albanians wait to see what Mr Hill has to say about their lengthy replies to international proposals for a three-year interim period of autonomy for Kosovo. "It's a bit like waiting to get your homework back," one adviser said.
Sources close to the mediators argue that much of the nitty-gritty negotiating was done by Mr Hill in weeks of arduous shuttle diplomacy leading up to Rambouillet.
Diplomats also insist that there remains room for compromise as far as political and constitutional issues are concerned. For example, the mediators have suggested there should be 100 deputies in a new-look Kosovo assembly, but the Albanians want more.
The mediators have suggested there should be a president of Kosovo, but the Serbians object to the word because it would put Kosovo on a par with Yugoslavia's constituent republics, Serbia and Montenegro.
By setting a strict time limit, backed up by the threat of military air strikes in case of failure, the Contact Group is hoping it can browbeat the two sides into a swift accord.
The British Foreign Secretary, Mr Robin Cook, who is co-hosting the talks, said last week that he expected 80 per cent of the decisions to be made in the last 24 hours of discussions.
"That is bound to happen if they don't hand over all their proposals until the last minute," the Albanian adviser said. "But how can we hope to end a problem which started 10 years ago in just 24 hours?"