Almost exactly one year ago this weekend, four men gathered in a small cafe by the sparkling chill waters of Lake Geneva. One of them was a BBC reporter. The other three were Yugoslav ethnic Albanian businessmen, long-time residents of Switzerland.

As the reporter, Paul Wood, sipped his coffee, the three explained that, despite appearances, they were in fact military commanders in charge of an army which few had seen or heard of yet was poised to launch a war which would sweep through the southernmost province of Yugoslavia.

Wood decided against doing a story. "What could I tell the BBC?" he said. "That I met three Albanians in a cafe in Switzerland who told me they were about to start a war?"

In the space of 12 months, the three men have swapped the cafe table for the peace table. They are commanders of the Kosovo Liberation Army, now seen as the key to Kosovo's peace talks, due to start this morning in France's Rambouillet chateau, outside Paris.

Western envoys, starting a week of behind-closed-doors talks here, are hoping to persuade the KLA to drop demands for independence - refused by the Serbs - in return for autonomy within Yugoslavia. If they fail, the KLA is poised to launch its spring offensive with 15,000 soldiers.

Hatiche Myflari is one of them. This 21-year-old stands barely five feet tall, wears a blue polo-neck under her mottled green and brown battledress, has dark hair with blonde highlights, and a battered Kalasnikov machine gun.

While her bosses were sitting last January in that Geneva cafe, Myflari was a student demonstrator in Kosovo's capital, Pristina, marching in what proved to be the end of eight years of passive resistance to Serb rule.

Then, in March, Serb forces destroyed the farm of a local ethnic Albanian warlord, Adem Jashari. The two-day bombardment left 86 dead, mostly civilians. It was a defining moment for thousands of Kosovans.

"I was on those student marches - we did give peace a chance," says Myflari. "But when the massacre happened, we saw that nothing had changed. My brothers went away to join the KLA. So I dropped my studies and left Pristina and joined them."

She sits in her bulky uniform on a row of mattresses in a dark, snug farmhouse which serves as a temporary command post, flanked by other soldiers, the farmer and his young sons. Further back, the women of the house sit silently, while teenage girls ensure the tiny glasses of hot, sweet tea of their much younger brothers, who sit with the men, remain full.

"That life I had before, going out with friends in the coffee bars, that seems a long way away now," she says. "That part of life is postponed for now."

Her political views, expressed with many glances at her commander, are blunt. "I feel good to be here in this free zone, but I want to get the rest of Kosovo free as well."

Kosovo's Serbs have other plans. The province may be 90 per cent ethnic Albanian - the Kosovars - but it is also regarded by many Serbs as the cradle of their nation, the site of many of their most important orthodox monasteries.

"There are still people who think they can get a solution peacefully," says Sami Lushtaku, Myflari's commander. "But the reality is there are two ways we will get our independence. Through some big pressure from the West or through fighting for it."

If Myflari is KLA's present, then the men gathered in brandnew snow uniforms high on the northern Shala mountain are its future.

This windswept snowfield is one of the few "rear areas" of the KLA. These men are part of the new-look KLA. After a disastrous summer, in which ill-trained units were hacked down by Serb artillery, the KLA has had a makeover. These are the Black Tigers, one of several "special units" who show off their skills in co-ordinated attacks, house-clearing and unarmed combat.

Their army has also had an image makeover. Drawing on skills among the 300,000 Kosovans living in western Europe, it has created a new image. Across Europe and the US, fundraising dinners and concerts are held, with a line of KLA merchandising that has its brandname, yellow on an orange background, emblazoned on hats, flags and T-shirts. And now there are press facilities for western correspondents, complete with a free lunch afterwards.

The clenched-fist salute has gone - too macho. In has come the NATO model. "The Serb troops fight because they are paid," says the Tigers' commander, who won't be named but admits to fighting the Serbs before during their 1991 war with Croatia. "But our troops do it for nothing."

And here lies the problem. Bosnia's war was ended in 1995 in Dayton, Ohio, when all sides were exhausted by four years of fighting. The Serbs, with an economy verging on bankruptcy, may be keen to end Kosovo's war. But for the KLA, things have just begun.

"The advantage of this peace conference is that the western states have recognised the KLA," says Jashar Salihu, one of the original Geneva trio, now its paymaster.

"There is no force that can make the KLA sign a document that is for autonomy within Yugoslavia"