General Sir Michael Jackson

Our job has been to translate the political agreement into a workable military reality.

The Yugoslav delegation presented a proposal that would not guarantee the safe return of the refugees or the full withdrawal of Yugoslav forces and indeed was inconsistent with the text produced by the President of Finland Ahtisaari and Chernomyrdin, the Russian special Balkans envoy.

Nato therefore has no alternative but to continue, and intensify, the air campaign until such time as the Yugoslav side are prepared to implement the agreement fully and without ambiguity.

We are prepared to meet with the Yugoslav delegation as necessary to achieve it.

Yugoslav Foreign Ministry Spokesman Neboja Vujovic

The Yugoslav delegation came here in good faith to achieve a technical agreement based on the political documents adopted in Belgrade in direct talks, trilateral talks between special Russian presidential envoy Mr Viktor Chernomyrdin, President Ahtisaari and President Milosevic.

The talks were constructive and positive. We pursued them in good faith and will continue to do so.

We have a mandate based on the decision of parliament of the republic of Serbia and the government of Yugoslavia to achieve a technical, military agreement based on the principles put forth by the Belgrade meeting.

Those principles include the full respect of the territorial integrity and sovereignty of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, of which Kosovo is an integral part, the deployment of an international security presence under the auspices of the United Nations or a presence established by a Security Council decision.

We will continue with our constructive efforts and we are ready to talk further. The speculations that we have no mandate for those talks are not correct. A lot of media reported today.