This is clearly a very important day in the whole operation in which we have been engaged for these past weeks and months and I thought I should come up and brief you myself here.

As you know, at about 0500 hours today KFOR began to deploy inside Kosovo. The first of our forces, the British and French brigade elements, crossed the border at 0500 hours, they are continuing now to push deeper into Kosovo. Later today and continuing into tomorrow, the German, Italian and American brigades will enter and I want to begin by paying tribute to the courage and the dedication of our armed forces, their countries and their families can be very proud of these men and women. Not only have our forces conducted a successful air campaign which forced Milosevic to meet our five central demands but they have also been responsible for heroic work on the humanitarian front.

Our work, of course, is far from done and the dangers are far from being over. Our forces are entering difficult territory but they know that their cause is a right one and will do whatever it takes to secure Kosovo and to prepare for the return of the hundreds of thousands of refugees who have been driven from their homes by this brutal ethnic cleansing.

We have gotten this far not just because of the professionalism of our forces but also because of the resolve and determination of the NATO allies. Milosevic was banking on the Alliance crumbling - it just never happened - and in fact the longer that we went on and the longer that he resisted, the greater our resolve became.

I want to thank the NATO allies, the Heads of State, Presidents and Prime Ministers, the Ministers of Defence and Foreign Affairs and the military leaders and especially Secretary General Solana for the support and direction that we in the NATO armed forces have had.

So far today the elements of the 5th UK Airborne Brigade have conducted an air-mobile operation and secured the flanks of the main road from the Djakovic border crossing to Pristina. At about 0915 hours this morning, the 4th UK Armoured Brigade moved through the area held by the airborne troops and it is continuing north. In addition, its reconnaissance battalion and elements of 5th Airborne Brigade are currently in the vicinity of Pristina airfield.

Concurrently, French forces crossed the border into Kosovo north of Koumanovo; after breaching a minefield that had been marked by the Serbs they proceeded north and are well over 20 kilometres into Kosovo.

Lead elements of the German 12th Panzer Brigade have moved rapidly through Albania and will be entering Kosovo later today or early in the morning in the vicinity of Kukes, moving to Prizren initially and tomorrow the Italian and the remaining elements of the American forces will move into Kosovo.

I should say a word about Russia and I won't pretend that Russia did not take a different view on the air campaign but we do welcome the fact that they stayed engaged throughout the political process contributing to the agreement that formed the basis of the military-technical agreement that we are now implementing. I welcome, too, the fact that they will involved in KFOR and we are working now to ensure that they are properly deployed within an effective and unified chain of command.

The first huge task has been accomplished. Despite all the predictions to the contrary, the air campaign was a success. Many could not see how well the air campaign was working and for reasons I understand mistakes and accidents did generate a great deal of media and press coverage but there are no cookie-cutter solutions to military problems, each operation has to be constructed uniquely, aimed at its own specific objectives and conducted within the political and strategic environment that it faces at the time, and when the history books are written they will say that operation Allied Force was the most precise and most successful air campaign carried out.

At the outset, we said that we were going to systematically and progressively attack, disrupt, degrade, devastate unless President Milosevic complied with the demands of the international community and ultimately destroy the Serb forces in Kosovo, their facilities, the support and all the assets that President Milosevic valued and we did precisely that, and Milosevic complied.

When asked how long it would take, NATO leaders have been saying it could take days or weeks or months, that it would ultimately depend on how much punishment President Milosevic was willing to absorb and how much suffering he wanted to impose on his armed forces. This was also true and we have been saying for weeks that we were winning, he was losing and he knew it. I think events have borne us out in every case.

Now, another huge task is under way, getting the Serb forces out and our forces in is a huge logistical operation which is not risk-free. Our information is that some 10 per cent of the tanks, 30 per cent of the armoured personnel carriers, 10 per cent of the artillery and mortars and perhaps 12 per cent of the military, police and paramilitary personnel - maybe 7,000 or more persons - have left Kosovo and despite a few violations, the cease-fire seems to be holding.

But the most important task of all is the one that this whole operation has been about, that is getting the refugees home. The world has been impressed by the dignity of the refugees and by their eagerness and even impatience to return home. We just ask that the refugees give us a little more time until the situation is a little more stabilised so it is safe for them to return. They know they are not going home tomorrow but they know they are going home and going home very soon. They know, too, that while they don't today know the scale, there will be horrors that are barely imaginable to confront when they get there but their desire to get home is overwhelming and our determination to help them is unshakeable. I am proud to be in a leadership position in this operation but those of us in this command will only rest when the refugees are home and secure.

Many of us have seen so much of the damage done to this region by the evil policies of racial conflict and ethnic cleansing and I know I speak on behalf of all of the men and women of the Armed Forces who say that once our military task is done here that there will be moves in the region and in Serbia in particular toward democracy and that this conflict can be seen as the turning point that led to a new future for the people of the Balkans.

...First of all, with respect to the Russians there, I am not now on my command and control so I can't tell you precisely what event is happening now but as I walked in I got a call that we are either at or already on the airfield. These soldiers have worked together for a long time, these Russian troops came out of Bosnia, we know them well in SFOR, we know many of their leaders including some of their top leaders who were there and so I am sure we are going to be able to work this out in the fashion that soldiers normally do...

...we are working on the modalities of that relationship. This is an ongoing political-level discussion, it is being held on a bilateral basis and shortly it will be brought into more of an Alliance context on the ground and so we are confident we are moving toward a solution in that regard...

...with respect to the question on the chain of command, as you know, we are looking for an effective international security presence with a unified chain of command. I think those two words "effective" and "unified" are the key elements in defining how this relationship will ultimately be developed and I don't want to prescribe that at this point, I want the experts that are working on it to work this out and then of course in due time it will be presented and you will all understand exactly how this works...

...The answer is that we have not set a precise limit or tried to define the exact composition of a potential Russian contribution. This will have to be worked out in dialogue in the coming hours and days and I am confident that it will be. We have had NATO contact with these officers...

...I think there is a lot of explaining that will have to be done on all of these issues over time. I will tell you from our perspective at NATO we got word very early, almost as soon as they moved, that they were moving and we knew they had been preparing and we had been on the alert for this...

...As to the legalities and modalities of it, I would simply remind you that in the military-technical agreement COM-KFOR has the authority to direct all operations on the ground, to control all facilities, to tell all forces, any forces, to re-deploy, move or otherwise take adjustments and by virtue of the fact that the Russian vehicles have been marked with KFOR lettering, one would assume that they recognise this authority. This is something that will be discussed in coming hours I am sure...

...I would describe (the Russian move into Kosovo) as more or less a quartering party. It was an element that was pulled out of another command, it was sent racing along to apparently move to an airfield to do some mission - we can't imagine what- in an unco-ordinated fashion so right now I wouldn't want to pass judgement on it at this stage except to say that it seems to be an isolated element that is out there by itself and I am sure it will have to be brought into the design of the overall mode of NATO and Russian work in KFOR...

...Three things for the humanitarian situation. First, our troops going in in KFOR are going to do everything they can when they arrive to help provide and meet urgent humanitarian needs both for food, medical assistance and that sort of thing and they are well-equipped and well-prepared to do that. Secondly, an increasing number of non-governmental organisations are lining up to go back in there and they are going to be effective. We are still doing humanitarian air drops and we have on back-up a number of additional humanitarian air-drop capabilities that we are waiting to deploy, so we are going to be extremely attentive to the humanitarian situation...

...There have been a number of diplomatic contacts by various nations with KLA authorities. We are at the beginning of a process of trying to make contact with all of the armed groups inside Kosovo, the KLA being one amongst those groups and they will be given specific instructions on what they must do to comply with the agreement. We have received indirectly every assurance thus far of their willingness to comply, we have seen indications of their intent to comply but as I said, we are in the early stages of this and when the details of this compliance are developed and worked out I am sure we will present them for everyone's information...