Archbishop Artemije stood on the steps outside the Boro and Ramiz Sports Centre in central Pristina to address a crowd of 500 Kosovar Serbs.
It was noon and sweat poured down the rough, sun-browned faces of young and old, men and women, soldiers and policemen. They have lived through nearly three months of war, and the black mourning clothes worn by many of the women told their own story.
NATO, the Belgrade government and the UN Security Council were still haggling over the sequence of a military-technical agreement, cessation of bombing and a Security Council resolution.
But for these Serbs, the end of the war is its most dangerous moment. Their very existence is at stake, the white-haired old man from Decani Monastery told the joint meeting of the Serbian Resistance Movement and the Serbian Church Council. "The fundamental question," he said, "is to be or not to be."
It is a question that makes Belgrade nervous - so nervous that a few minutes earlier the Ministry of the Interior banned the group from meeting in a public auditorium.
As the crowd pushed its way back outside, a bald man with glasses cursed Marshal Tito. "He is to blame for everything," the man shouted, referring to Tito's "ethnic cleansing" of Kosovo Serbs for the sake of Yugoslavia's relations with Albania. "You've been f---ed by Tito, and by Slobodan Milosevic," the man continued. "May their descendants have bone cancer for 12 generations."
The archbishop tried to put a brave face on the outdoor venue, calling the oven-hot mall surrounded by bomb-battered high-rises "a gathering in the shrine of God under the holy sky".
His message was simple: "Whatever happens to us, stay in your homes, in your villages, in your cities . . . Don't leave the holy places empty. A wrong historical move can never be corrected."
Moma Trajkovic, the archbishop's ally and the head of the Serbian Resistance Movement (which used to support President Milosevic) sounded more desperate.
"Those who brought us to this situation," he said, clearly referring to Mr Milosevic, "will not allow us to fight." Now, after a war in which Serbs have raped, robbed, pillaged and murdered, Mr Trajkovic pleaded for mercy.
"Ask those making decisions to protect us," he told the crowd. "Revenge is not the answer. We will not be slaughtered like lambs on our doorsteps. We ask those responsible to come between those who can start slaughtering each other."
A gaggle of priests and "Resistance Movement" leaders headed off to the holiest place in Serbdom, Gracanica Monastery, to discuss the matter further.
We found four Kalashnikov rifles piled beside the door of the church built by King Milutin at the beginning of the 14th century. "I thank my Lord for saving my neck and bringing me back to my family," a soldier had just written in the church's guest book.
In an apparent reference to Mr Milosevic's capitulation, the soldier continued: "Forgive, dear Lord, this insult to the legacy of holy Lazar and our ancestors and everything sacred in Kosovo." A second visitor wrote: "Punish all the enemies who want to destroy your people."
The frescoes inside the entry show King Milutin in his jewel-encrusted robes, holding an architect's model of Gracanica.
His child bride Simonida, the daughter of the Byzantine emperor, faces him.
She was a lonely, six year-old girl given in marriage to a 50-year-old man so ruthless that he overthrew his brother Dragutin - after Dragutin overthrew their father King Uros.
But it is an alleged act of vandalism - not family betrayal - that most Serbs remember. Every Serb schoolchild learns Milan Rakic's poem Simonida: "Your eyes were gouged, beautiful image!/One night, on that slab of stone/Confident no one would see him/An Albanian with his knife gouged your eyes . . . "
In a cafe across the road, we talked to the Serb soldiers who had left their guns at the door while they prayed for their families.
Srdjan (30), a fierce-looking car mechanic and volunteer from southern Serbia, wore track-suit bottoms, a T-shirt and runners.
He had come to arrange his own baptism at Gracanica this week, "because everyone would like to be baptised in such a holy place".
He could not accept the peace agreement, he said. "If we leave, the Albanians are going to drive out all the Serbs. What have we been fighting for? They gouged out their eyes already," he said, referring to the frescoes of Milutin, Simonida and Serb saints across the street. "All that is left is for them to burn it."
Despite the peace talks, NATO bombers thundered above us, and we heard explosions to the west towards the Albanian border.
Ljuba, a 33-year-old electrician and reservist in the Yugoslav army, had a low opinion of NATO forces.
"They are not fighting with uniforms," he said. "They are at war against our holy places, our factories, our bridges, our kindergartens, our hospitals. They don't have the guts to look us in the eyes. They are cowards. We pray God they come and put their boots on our soil."
Their commanding officer, Capt Nebojsa, arrived in a smart uniform and sent his men back to their truck.
A veteran of the 1991 war in Croatia, the captain said this conflict was much worse, "because of the aerial bombardment - in Croatia it was man-to-man".
Now, he said, the end of this war is turning out to be the most dangerous part of it. "In this last period, since the start of the negotiations, all along the roads there are ambushes."
He believes that any agreement is doomed to fail "because there is no chance the Kosovo Liberation Army will respect it; they have no chain of command and they are fighting each other."
The conscripts and reservists swore they would never leave Kosovo, but Capt Nebojsa assured us the army would obey orders.
"The army is preparing for a withdrawal - if it is signed," he said. "The civilians will go with us. And those who decide to stay . . . I don't know; I don't know what will happen to them."