The Serb parliament debated and voted its acceptance of the EU/ NATO-Russian peace plan behind closed doors, as if to hide a shameful thing. It was - as one of the 82 deputies who voted against the resolution declared angrily - nothing less than capitulation.
After 72 days of NATO bombardment, after thousands of casualties and destruction that forced his people to read by candlelight and wash with water carried in buckets, President Milosevic called the extraordinary session to give himself an alibi for surrender.
The Yugoslav leader can claim that he merely bowed to the will of the country's democratically elected representatives.
With 168 Yes votes, the assembly barely cleared the two-thirds required to pass the motion. Mr Vojislav Seselj, the militia leader who heads the ultra-nationalist Serbian Radical Party, stormed out in fury, vowing to resign from his post as Deputy Prime Minister if NATO troops enter Kosovo. But would Mr Seselj and his White Eagles form a guerrilla army to fight the UN peace-keepers? That is one of many dangers facing implementation of the accord.
Here in the Yugoslav capital, there was no singing or dancing and very few smiles in the streets. To some, the parliamentary vote signalled defeat; to many others, the utter futility of 10 weeks of suffering and the certainty that their trials have not ended.
"I am terrified of the winter," an unemployed former air hostess for the grounded Yugoslav national airline said. "Temperatures go down to minus 10 degrees here, and there will still be power cuts because of the bombing. Some of us will freeze to death."
Many Serbs are not convinced the war is over. The White House said the bombardment would continue until Belgrade begins withdrawing its 40,000 troops from Kosovo. Army officers are asking how they can organise a withdrawal under fire; some see the requirement as a trick.
"NATO wants to know where our men are," a Yugoslav defence ministry source said. "As soon as they come out, we think they'll kill as many soldiers as they can."
Government officials hadn't a clue whether Mr Milosevic would make a television address, although the presidency issued a statement reported by Tanjug, the Yugoslav news agency, saying he accepted the plan. He is known for his reluctance to speak in public. "Nothing has changed," a civil servant told me. "It's surreal. The president said nothing. Nobody is saying anything. We're like orphaned children or a flock without a shepherd. The war may be over but they are still bombing. There's a solution, but there is no solution."
Four men drinking brandy and mineral water at a pavement cafe table under the maple trees on Brothers Jugovica Street seemed unimpressed by the parliamentary vote. They had just come from an Association of Serb Writers meeting where one of them, an ethnic gypsy professor from Pristina, had delivered a speech. "We would have preferred that the war continue," they all said with that incredible, reckless defiance so characteristic of Serbs.
Ms Louise Arbour, the chief prosecutor of the International Court of Justice at The Hague - which indicted their president for war crimes last week - was, the four men claimed, a fascist, a Nazi and a tool of the US. President Clinton was a sex fiend and the emigrants who founded America were the criminals and trash of the earth.
The professor wanted to show me photographs of gypsy children killed by the Nazis in the second World War. "We rescued American pilots in the second World War," one of his companions joined in. "Now the children and the grandchildren of the pilots we rescued are killing us. This is how they repay us." The second World War, inevitably, always; I have not attended a single press conference where it was not mentioned.
So why was Mr Milosevic finally giving up, I asked Goran, an unemployed technician for the much-bombed state television station.
"You may be very proud, you may be very brave, but bombs are very convincing," he replied. Bill Clinton deserved to be the next president of Serbia, he joked sarcastically. "He succeeded in getting rid of our rotten old roads and bridges and our loss-making government companies - and he united the Serbs!"
If it had been up to the men, Serbia would have fought to the end, Goran claimed. As mothers and homemakers, women are much more affected by the hardship inflicted by NATO, he explained.
Goran was the second person to tell me of the male/female divide in patriotism and opinion. "We are getting dirty. We are getting skinny and we are letting ourselves go," Marija, a single 34year-old woman had complained to me. She had a bitter argument with her ex-boyfriend over the war. "I said, `Look, this NATO bombing and the power failures are just the icing on the cake [Milosevic] has been serving us for the past ten years'. He told me: `you shouldn't say anything against our president because it's treason and you are a traitor'. I was so angry I wanted to kill him."
The only hint of celebration yesterday was the sound of late 19th century waltzes through the windows of the Army Social Club as the band practised for Army Day celebrations in two weeks' time.
In Brussels, NATO said it had killed more than 5,000 Yugoslav soldiers in 10 weeks of bombardment. Earlier this week, Gen Nebojsa Pavkovic, the Commander of the 3rd Army in Pristina, boasted that his forces had suffered minimal losses - "less than one per cent". Yet the counsel of high-ranking officers is one of three explanations cited for Mr Milosevic giving in. Pressure from war weary civilians and the Hague court indictment are the other two.
I found only one person yesterday - a salesman in a clothing shop - who was unabashedly happy about the vote in parliament. "We've signed. It's capitulation. It should have been done a long time ago," he said with a huge grin.
The only fear of the middle-aged shopkeeper was that Washington seemed to have reservations about the agreement. "They might be in a dispute with the Europeans," he suggested. Unlike the men at the cafe three blocks away, he thought Yugoslavia had gained nothing by holding out for ten weeks.
"It's a catastrophe, the apocalypse of communism," he said. Mr Milosevic started his career in the Communist Party. "God willing it will be the end of him," he said, still smiling.
"If God exists, if there is sanity in the world."
The private Belgrade radio station Studio B was alone in carrying the text of the blueprint, which foresees the withdrawal of all Yugoslav troops from Kosovo. But Studio B can be heard only in parts of the Yugoslav capital, which still suffers power shortages after weeks of NATO air strikes.