Chief talks spokesman Phil Reeker said at midday that negotiators are still meeting with the Serbs to determine whether or not they are engaging in a ``process,'' indicating no progress had been made in the 24 hours since he made the same comment.

The Albanian side claimed the Serbs were trying to change 70 per cent of the proposed political agreement -- changes that would give the ethnic Albanian majority even less autonomy than it has now.

Last month in Rambouillet, France, during the first round of talks, Serbs had said they were prepared to sign the political part of the deal, but not the military part that calls for NATO-led troops to enforce the peace deal.

Serbian President Milan Milutinovic said yesterday that his side still refuses the military component, and would only sign the political part under the`precondition' that the mediators ``accept all of our complaints.''

Milutinovic's comments appeared to bring closer the prospect of NATO air strikes against Serbia.

Western nations sponsoring the talks have said the military and political components are inseparable and have warned of an armed intervention if Serbs continue to reject the US-sponsored plan.

Accusing Serb negotiators of backtracking on key elements of the draft agreement, US State Department spokesman James Rubin said ``time and patience clearly are running out.''

``The Serbs must decide ``whether they want a peace agreement rather than a catastrophe,'' he said in Washington.

Rubin arrived in Paris yesterday and was briefed by chief US mediator Christopher Hill.

His comments came amid an ominous new buildup of forces in and around Kosovo. Pentagon spokesman Kenneth Bacon said 16,000 to 21,000 Yugoslav army troops are now on the perimeter of the province. An additional 14,000 to 18,000 Yugoslav army forces are deployed inside Kosovo,Bacon said.

Adding urgency to the talks in Paris, a forensic team investigating the slayings of dozens of Kosovo Albanians that prompted world outrage in January concluded that the victims were unarmed civilians, contrary to Serb claims.

But the long-awaited report by the Finnish team, sponsored by the European Union, stopped short of calling the Racak killings a massacre.