We’ve had to make concessions, but what was the alternative? No agreement, and you drive them underground, and Nato would end up fighting the KLA.” If all goes wrong, that could yet happen. If they’re going to surrender their arms, they want to do so with dignity, without undue haste. They see themselves as victors over the Serb army, and the future army of an independent Kosovo. When these individuals went to war, they brought their own weapons, so obviously it’s going to be virtually impossible to get them all out of circulation.

“In my experience of the Balkans,” says a senior allied general involved in the negotiations, “Every man has a weapon. The first crucial test will be the implementation of last week’s demilitarisation agreement, in which the KLA promised to stop wearing uniforms and carrying arms, and to hand over all its weapons within 90 days at secure sites controlled by Nato The deal is not perfect. But even in a Kosovo without Serbs, there is no guarantee of lasting peace either between Nato and the Kosovo Liberation Army, or among Albanians themselves. The future Kosovo will be one almost exclusively populated by Albanians, whose last juridical links with Yugoslavia will sooner or later surely be severed completely.

However sincerely the allies may strive for a multi-ethnic Kosovo, even the imminent arrival of 3,600 Russian peacekeepers will not alter the overwhelming likelihood of ethnic cleansing in reverse. The few hundred Yugoslav soldiers allowed back into Kosovo to help with mine clearing and to guard Serbian religious and cultural sites will themselves need protection by Nato. And K-For simply does not have enough peacekeepers to protect Serbs scattered across the country. But there will be no specific ethnic sectors in Kosovo and thus no partition, veiled or otherwise. Nato may promise to be even- handed in its treatment of Serbs and Albanians.

And who can blame them? Now the plumes of smoke hang over houses where Serbs had lived, looted and torched by ethnic Albanians understandably bent on avenging everything they suffered at Serb hands. At least a third of its 175,000 Serb inhabitants have left in the wake of the departing Yugoslav army, and more will surely follow, despite the pleading of Nato, Serb politicians and the Serbian Orthodox Church for them to stay. The new Kosovo will be utterly different from the one which existed before Slobodan Milosevic went there in 1987 to raise the banner of Serb nationalism. But no amount of assistance, attention and firepower can build a lasting peace. The fact, moreover, that Kosovo will be an international protectorate, administered by the UN and guarded by Nato, means there is actually a chance the money will be used as intended. Almost certainly, a new currency, pegged to either the German mark or the dollar, will be introduced to replace the endlessly devalued Yugoslav dinar. The early autumn will see another conference, where more funds will be pledged to join the $1.5bn already promised by the European Union.

High level international meetings stretch ahead as far as the eye can see – a first donors’ conference in July, likely to be followed by a summit attended even by Bill Clinton to discuss the mooted “Stability Pact” to promote democracy and economic development in the entire Balkan region. Its war has lasted less than three months, not three years, and unlike the conflict in Bosnia will not end in partition.The World Bank, the European Investment Bank and a host of other financial institutions are lining up task forces and reconstruction plans. Kosovo is smaller and ethnically more homogeneous than Bosnia. What is more, the physical rebuilding may be relatively simple.