NATO'S two top leaders brought Kosovo's capital Pristina to a standstill yesterday as crowds of cheering ethnic Albanians embraced them, tossed flowers and kissed their hands.
On the other side of the province, Italian peacekeeping troops escorted Serbs as they fled their homes in the town of Pec, forced out by Albanians in retaliation for atrocities committed by Serb forces in recent months.
More than 1,000 people swarmed around NATO Secretary-General Mr Javier Solana and Supreme Commander Gen Wesley Clark, chanting "NATO, NATO, NATO" after the two men appeared unannounced on the streets of Pristina.
"When I visited the refugee camps, I told them we would do everything possible to send them home," Mr Solana told reporters. "We have fulfilled our promise but there is still plenty of hard work ahead."
"NATO has made us free," said a tearful Agon Hamza (16), who has just returned from a camp in Macedonia.
Mr Solana and Gen Clark flew into Pristina by helicopter for meetings with NATO peacekeeping commanders, leaders of rival Albanian and Serb communities and the chief of the Kosovo Liberation Army.
The situation on the ground remains highly volatile. The bodies of a Serb professor, night guard and canteen manager were found at Pristina University. A NATO forensic expert said they appeared to have been shot.
Thousands of Kosovo Serbs have fled the province following the withdrawal of Yugoslav forces and the return of ethnic Albanian refugees. Tension is high between Albanians and the remaining Serbs.
Gen Clark said mounting evidence of systematic atrocities by Serb forces provided vindication for the air strikes which drove them from Kosovo. "I think the evidence of the mass graves is confirmation of the terrible wrong done here," he said.
Since the Serb pullout, many refugees have returned to their homes to find corpses, burned-out houses, poisoned wells and farmland littered with landmines. Survivors have told stories of massacres, torture and rape.
"They say you could hear the screams of the children above the crackle of the fire," an old ethnic Albanian woman said at the scene of an April massacre of 20 Albanians in the south-western town of Djakovica. FBI experts yesterday began to investigate the site, which is named in the indictment of President Slobodan Milosevic.
Mr Solana expressed concern about the growing revenge attacks by ethnic Albanians. "They have to stop this," he said. "They have to learn to live together in peace."
An estimated 50,000 Kosovo Serbs, about one quarter of the total number in the province, have fled to Serbia following the withdrawal of Yugoslav soldiers and police.
The UN refugee agency, UNHCR, in the Macedonian capital of Skopje said ethnic Albanian refugees continued to ignore pleas to stay put and were returning to Kosovo from Macedonia by the thousands daily.
Altogether 240,000 out of one million displaced people have returned to Kosovo from neighbouring Macedonia, Albania and Montenegro, a UNHCR spokeswoman said.
Meanwhile, foreign ministers from the Group of Eight announced they were to meet in New York on Wednesday to discuss how to deal with the civilian aspects of the Kosovo agreement, a US spokesman said yesterday.
"Secretary of State [Madeleine] Albright is determined to continue to focus on building lasting peace in Kosovo and wants her fellow ministers to work closely with the United Nations," a US State Department spokesman, Mr James Rubin, told reporters.
An administration, to be called the UN Interim Administration Mission in Kosovo, or UNMIK, will work hand in hand with the NATO-led military force, Kfor.
The ministers are expected to discuss who should be in charge of the administration but the meeting is not likely to take a decision on that, a US official said. "The meeting will be more focused on the specific civilian tasks and how the major countries can assist the United Nations with them."
Meanwhile, the Yugoslav parliament yesterday approved a government proposal to end the three-month state of war, lifting the war regime from tomorrow. The joint session of parliament passed the proposal with one abstention.
The US yesterday offered a $5 million "bounty" for information leading to the arrest or conviction of indicted war criminals, including Mr Milosevic.