The US Defence Secretary, Mr William Cohen, has dropped plans to attend a NATO meeting in Brussels tomorrow which had been expected to decide whether to authorise air strikes in Kosovo, Pentagon officials said yesterday. But doubts remained about the intentions of Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic.
"I don't see it," one official said of Mr Milosevic. "He is playing us like a violin. He went to the Saddam school, no doubt about it," he added, referring to Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, who also has engaged Washington repeatedly in brinksmanship.
Serbian security forces were reported to be returning to barracks and Belgrade announced that a seven-month long offensive against ethnic Albanians was over.
Pentagon officials said Mr Cohen would now not attend a meeting tomorrow in Brussels of the North Atlantic Council, which had been expected to authorise air strikes if Belgrade failed to yield to UN demands.
One Pentagon official said the emphasis was shifting back to diplomacy and away from the use of force to compel compliance with a UN resolution demanding the withdrawal of forces from Kosovo, access for relief organisations and the start of political talks.
However, the State Department said that Belgrade had not taken sufficient steps to halt the repression in Kosovo, indicating that military action was still a possibility.
While acknowledging that Mr Milosevic had moved to end the violence in the Albanian-populated province, these "initial signs of possible changes on the ground . . . need to be amplified," the State Department deputy spokesman, Mr James Foley, said, adding, "Half-steps are not enough."
A report presented earlier by the UN Secretary-General, Mr Kofi Annan, "makes crystal clear that there has not been compliance by the Serb authorities" with UN resolutions calling for an end to the violence, he said.
The State Department indicated that Mr Milosevic would have to commit himself to taking concrete steps when he meets the UN envoy, Mr Richard Holbrooke, in Belgrade on Monday.
These steps include a full withdrawal of forces from the province, access for international observers and relief organisations to Kosovo, and the resumption of negotiations on a political settlement with the Albanian leaders.
The US Secretary of State, Ms Madeleine Albright, is likely to travel to Brussels on Thursday to attend a NATO ministerial meeting which could produce a political decision to launch military action in Yugoslavia. Ms Albright, who travelled to Israel yesterday, has been in contact with her European counterparts and Mr Annan to press them to shore up the threat of force.
The Yugoslav government said earlier in Belgrade that it had withdrawn some of its police units from Kosovo, and that a delegation from the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) was invited in to verify this.