It said Washington wanted to avoid the risk of US military casualties, as the multinational observer team will be unarmed, and decided it was safer to give the task to private contractors.

The contract, to provide 150 weapons and verification inspectors, drivers and technicians to join the 2,000-strong monitoring group, was secured by the Virginia-based company DynCorp.

Under an accord reached with Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic, the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) will deploy the monitors to verify that Belgrade complies with international demands to end its bloody crackdown on ethnic Albanian separatists there.

NATO had threatened air strikes if Belgrade did not pull its troops out.``We have extensive experience of doing business for the military,'' TheGuardian quoted Spence Wickham, director of operations in the DynCorp unit which is handling the Kosovo mission, as saying.

He said the men would arrive in the region later on SaturdayThe Guardian noted also that around half of Britain's promised team of 200 observers would not be serving military personnel either.

The move to hire the firm will certainly help the morale of the armed forces as it will give the added confidence of avoiding risks and thereby keep themselves intact for some real action in future.