Observers report Serb compliance

“But let me be clear,” Rubin said after enumerating the positive signs. “It’s a mixed bag and we’re not there yet.”

A “preliminary readout” from two American and one European teams on the ground, Rubin said, show that the “Serb police presence is much smaller in the countryside than on Sunday; and the Serb police are leaving the countryside”.

The teams “regarded the access as excellent” and found that 80 per cent of the checkpoints on the road from Orahovac to Malisevo were gone, while on the road from Srbica to Klina they still found policepresence and bunkers, Rubin added.

“On the East-West Highway South of Malisevo, there are signs of life returning,” the spokesman said.

“Villages are fuller, and some of the local Kosovars that (the monitoring teams) met with indicated that they were pleased with the changed circumstances in which they were going to be provided greater security through this agreement and its verification system.”

Rubin stressed that “these are very preliminary reports by a few monitors”.

“The key to this agreement, if it’s going to work, is going to be the on-site verification system on the ground, and the aerial verification system in the air that we are trying very hard to stand up in the coming days,” he added.

In a breakthrough in the seven-month-old crisis, US envoy Richard Holbrooke announced on Tuesday that Yugoslavia had agreed to western demands over Kosovo, while Yugoslav President, Slobodan Milosevic, was able to claim he had averted NATO strikes against Serbia.

According to the deal, Belgradewill allow 2,000 verifiers into Kosovo to monitor troop withdrawals and let unarmed aircraft fly over its territory to make sure that Serbia is abiding by UN Security Council resolutions.

Resolution 1199 of September 23 calls on Belgrade to establish an immediate ceasefire, withdraw its special forces from the province, allow refugees to return and establish a political dialogue with Kosovo’s ethnic Albanian separatists.