Diplomats are confident that all sides in the Kosovo war will assemble this Saturday for western-sponsored peace talks in Paris after a whirlwind tour of the region by the British Foreign Secretary, Mr Robin Cook.
Officially, neither the rebels nor President Slobodan Milosevic of Yugoslavia has said yes, but days of frantic talks surrounding Mr Cook's visit have now generated the green light. "I think they will attend," said one diplomat. "The KLA (Kosovo rebels) are showing great flexibility."
Mr Cook arrived in Yugoslavia as chairman of the international Contact Group, which has demanded that both the ethnic Albanians and Yugoslav government attend the talks. But while both sides talked peace, they continued fighting, albeit hindered by heavy snowfalls that hampered military operations.
Mr Cook said the Contact Group was ready to apply pressure to make the peace talks work because of the failure of the last ceasefire deal, signed last October, to generate progress.
"At the end of three months the political track is getting nowhere and that's why we're doing it," he said. "In a sense I'm here preaching because they [Albanians and Serbs] cannot constantly ask people in London, Paris and Moscow to solve this problem. They've got to solve it themselves."
Yesterday, both sides continued "solving it themselves" in traditional style, with Yugoslav tanks from one of three battle groups stationed in the province blasting KLA positions in the village of Ljupce.
And there was a reminder of the continuing suffering with the funeral of a husband and wife, shot dead apparently by Serbian machine-gunners as they drove their tractor in Kosovo last weekend. Mr Hyseni Kurti and his wife, Sanije, two farmers killed with a friend and his two boys, were buried in their village of Crmljane, leaving behind six orphans.
British sources say the KLA's ruling 12-man council, based in Switzerland, has endorsed the talks. In addition to sending its "front man", the KLA has pledged through its spokesman Mr Adem Demaci, who is not a council member, to send at least one leader with powers to negotiate.
Mr Milosevic has also given his characteristically gruff "maybe" to Mr Cook's summons, but Serbian sources say he too will feel compelled to attend.
"They [the Serbs] are now forced to do something and that's why I think they will adopt this proposal to go to Paris," said Dr Slobodan Samardzic, of the European Studies Institute in Belgrade. "Then the game will really begin."
That game will be a complex one. Unlike Bosnia, where all sides were exhausted by the time they met for talks in 1995, Kosovo's protagonists are still fighting. Both sides, in particular the ever-growing KLA, believe there is much to win on the battlefield that may be lost in compromises at the peace table.