NATO stepped back from the brink of launching air strikes against Yugoslavia yesterday as the US envoy, Mr Richard Holbrooke, struck a deal with the Yugoslav President, Mr Slobodan Milosevic, which is expected to bring at least temporary peace to Kosovo.
Hours before NATO was due to consider activating air strikes that could have been launched yesterday, Mr Holbrooke flew to NATO's headquarters in Brussels to announce details of a peace plan.
The plan, hammered out in a marathon six days of talks with Mr Milosevic, calls on him to pull back troops, allow aid refugees and war crimes investigators free passage into the province, and, crucially, a 2,000-strong force of observers to monitor compliance.
With so many broken promises by Mr Milosevic littering the recent history of the Balkans, the US President, Mr Clinton, announcing the peace deal, stressed that verification was the key issue.
"Together with our NATO partners, we will determine whether President Milosevic follows words with deeds. And we will remain ready to take military action," said Mr Clinton.
Mr Milosevic has agreed as part of the deal to start talks with Kosovo's ethnic Albanians, specifically on arranging for some form of self-government for the province, with US officials hoping to underpin this with local elections to be held as early as December.
US officials said they were confident last night that Kosovo's Albanians would join the Serbs in signing a deal whereby the province enjoys autonomy for a three-year period after which its constitutional position will be reviewed.
Meanwhile, NATO's strike force of more than 400 aircraft and navy ships armed with cruise missiles assembled for strikes on Yugoslavia remains in a high state of readiness, with NATO having given its final authorisation to attack with an Activation Order passed yesterday.
The order was delayed for 96 hours, in practice holding a gun to Mr Milosevic's head for the rest of the week, and for some days following the Saturday activation as well.
Whether NATO will continue to hold a "big stick" to ensure Mr Milosevic keeps his end of the deal is unclear, but the next days will give the monitors, supervised by the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe, time to deploy.
The deal, and the relaxation of tension, brought relief in many quarters.
Among B-52 bomber crews stationed in the drizzle at Britain's Fairford air base, Capt Kelly Lawson said: "If you can get the message across just by picking up the big stick rather than having to use it, that's great."
In a short stern broadcast to the nation, Mr Milosevic told his people that Kosovo's problems could be solved through dialogue, but indicated that calls by its ethnic Albanian majority for independence were not negotiable.
A spokesman for the ethnic Albanian guerrillas, the Kosovo Liberation Army, Mr Bardhyl Mah muti, said from his Swiss base that they would accept the deal for the moment.
He said a rebel ceasefire, called last week, would hold, although the KLA remained committed to a breakaway Kosovo. "We insist on full independence. We cannot live with Serbia."