Albanian representatives in Europe claimed the Yugoslav government's appeal for a week-long ceasefire to coincide with Orthodox Easter was a sign that the resolve of President Slobodan Milosevic's regime was cracking.
But these repeated "peace initiatives" with their deceptively simple terms reinforce the Serbs' belief that they are the victims of a one-sided NATO aggression. The Serbs are so convinced that justice in on their side that Serb officials now readily speak of their intention to demand war reparations for the ever-increasing damage exacted in two weeks of NATO air strikes.
Serb forces admit only to a defensive role in Kosovo - all implication in "ethnic cleansing" is vehemently denied here - so it is hard to see what a "unilateral ceasefire" actually means.
Mr Milosevic believes that as civilian casualties and public opposition in the West mount, NATO will search for a way out and will eventually grasp at one of his balloons. Yesterday's proposal included a request for United Nations intervention.
Mr Nebojsa Vujovic, who served as Belgrade's charge d'affaires in Washington until the two countries broke off diplomatic relations, is now the spokesman for the Yugoslav Foreign Ministry.
Speaking to The Irish Times in a ministry office stripped of its filing cabinets and computers in anticipation of further bombing raids, he said the war against Yugoslavia "has undermined the whole system of international law, including the UN Security Council, which did not give it a mandate".
Mr Vujovic criticised Mr Kofi Annan for "acting more as a spokesman for NATO than Secretary-General of the United Nations" by emphasising "the so-called humanitarian catastrophe involving Albanian refugees" but failing to condemn the NATO bombings. "This is an un-winnable war because 11 million Serbs act in one heartbeat," he added.
The ceasefire announcement followed one of the heaviest nights of bombardment in the two-week war. At least five civilians were killed in the southern Serbian town of Aleksinac. These deaths were interpreted here as a turning point in a war that initially targeted only the military.
The victims were identified as a retired school teacher and his wife, a father and his daughter and the night watchman of a supermarket warehouse. Eyewitnesses who visited the site saw a woman's body amid the burning buildings. Police had left her there while they searched for her head.
Two other civilians are believed to have been buried in the rubble of a dozen homes destroyed in the bombing, and 30 more were wounded, five of them critically.
NATO's acknowledgement that its weapons system "may have malfunctioned" in Aleksinac was dismissed by the Yugoslav Defence Ministry as "a possible explanation, but not a justification".
With a population of less than 20,000, Aleksinac has been known as a town of widows and orphans since 92 men were killed in a mine accident in 1989. It is also the birthplace of Gen Nebojse Pavkovic, the Pristina-based commander of the Yugoslav Third Army, responsible for prosecuting the war in Kosovo.
Serbs believe that NATO deliberately targeted Aleksinac to undermine Gen Pavkovic's morale. The deaths of at least 23 civilians have now been confirmed in two weeks of war.
Last night thousands of Serbs formed human chains on the bridges across the Sava and Danube rivers in Belgrade to protect them from NATO attacks. Residents of the capital have expected the crossings to be bombed since the Serb and Yugoslav Interior Ministries in Belgrade were bombed on Saturday night.
At least five important bridges have now been destroyed. The bridge leading to Hungary at Sombor was destroyed on Monday night. Two bridges in Novi Sad, another leading to Montenegro and a fourth between Kosovo and Serbia at Raska have also been blown up.
NATO also bombed an oil refinery in Novi Sad on Monday night, the second refinery hit in as many days. Television relay stations in Pristina and Kragujevac were also destroyed, cutting broadcasts by state-run radio and television stations to much of the country.
Yesterday's "peace initiative" reconfirmed Belgrade's strategy of building up Mr Ibrahim Rugova as the "legitimate" representative of the Albanian Kosovans and sidelining what the Serbs call the "terrorist" Kosovo Liberation Army.
Mr Milosevic is hoping that, faced with the choice between Serb rule in Kosovo and a life of impoverished exile in neighbouring countries, some Albanians will rally to their historic, patriarchal leader, Mr Rugova. This would lend credence to Mr Milosevic's insistence that the conflict in Kosovo is an internal matter and that he wants all ethnic and religious groups to co-exist there.
The saga of Mr Rugova's reappearance tells a great deal about dis-information in the Yugoslav war. NATO had claimed that Mr Rugova was in hiding and that his house in the Pristina suburb of Velanija was destroyed by the Serbs. After a meeting on April 1st in Belgrade, Mr Milosevic and Mr Rugova made a joint appeal for a peaceful resolution of the conflict.
The Albanian politician, a university professor by training, repeated similar statements when the Russian ambassador to Belgrade called on him in Pristina in the presence of journalists on Monday.