``We have some encouraging news on Kosovo but we should be cautious,'' President Bill Clinton told mediapersons at the White House after the Serb parliament approved a peace plan based on a Group of Eight (G-8) proposal yesterday.

``Movement by the Serbian leadership to accept these conditions... is of course welcome,'' Clinton said. ``But based on our past experience, we must also be cautious.''

The US and its allies adopted a wait-and-see approach to Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic's acceptance of the deal, which requires that a Serb troop withdrawal precede any pause in the 72-day-old NATO air campaign.

``Until Serb forces begin a verifiable withdrawal from Kosovo, we will continue to pursue diplomacy, but we will also continue the military effort that has broughtus to this point,'' Clinton said.

The president then went into a meeting with his joint chiefs of staff chairman Henry Shelton and the heads of the four US military branches to discuss the deployment of a Kosovo security force (KFOR) once a deal is signed.

Defence Secretary William Cohen said later the majority of the talks were spent reviewing the effectiveness of the NATO strikes and US military readiness and that plans for a ground invasion were ``only briefly discussed''.

He would not elaborate on those talks, saying only ``no options have been taken off the table by the president.''

He added that a military accord between NATO and Belgrade on a total retreat of Yugoslav forces from Kosovo would be needed ``to satisfy us that Milosevic and his forces were in fact carrying out a departure pursuant to their agreement.''

Secretary of State Madeleine Albright said if Belgrade has in fact accepted the deal, diplomats will accelerate talks on returning the hundreds of thousands of displaced ethnicAlbanians to Kosovo.

In Brussels, US Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott, who was involved in talks with European Union and Russian envoys Martti Ahtisaari and Viktor Chernomyrdin, said yesterday verification of whether Belgrade is indeed pulling out its troops from Kosovo was ``the next step''.

``The next stage in this very important process is to confirm and to clarify and verify,'' Talbott said at the meeting of 19 ambassadors of NATO's North Atlantic Council discussing the latest Kosovo developments in Brussels.