West ponders symbolic gesture to Bosnia: Europe and its allies feel compelled to 'do something' but admit that enforcing the proposed no-fly zone will do little to stop the war, writes Annika Savill

IT WAS the last European tour of Lawrence Eagleburger, latterly nicknamed 'Lame Duck Larry', in ackowledgement of which he has taken to wearing a silver lapel pin of a crippled bird. The outgoing US Secretary of State, a former ambassador to Belgrade who was feeling betrayed by his old friend Slobodan Milosevic, used the tour to speak with passion of the need to curb the Serbs.

Before Mr Eagleburger even set off for Europe, a consensus had emerged among Western allies over the past few weeks on the need to 'do something' about the plight of Bosnian Muslims; with Christmas approaching, public opinion would reach a new pitch. But none of the most important players - the 'P3', or Western permanent members of the Security Council, Britain, France and the United States - was going to contemplate committing troops to an all-out intervention.

Having seized on the now 10- week-old no-fly zone, which was nominally, if not significantly, being violated by the Serbs, they all admitted privately that enforcing it was going to be rather more of a symbolic than a militarily important gesture. And yet, with the pondering and agonising that preceded that gesture alone, it took on, in the media and public perception, an importance it probably did not deserve. Moreover, as Douglas Hurd was to point out throughout the week, the discussion about a no-fly-zone resolution was taking place at the United Nations in New York.

So, to get from A to B, the P3 foreign ministers shuttled from Stockholm to Geneva to Brussels for meetings in various forums in which differing groups of states, more or less involved in the matter, said their tuppence worth. Mr Hurd skipped the first day of the foreign ministers' meeting organised by the Conference on Security and Co-operation in Europe (CSCE) in Stockholm. The plan was to 'get things right' on the no-fly zone, not to get bogged down in philosophical arguments about the future of European security among the group's more than 50 member states. 'I hope there won't be too much of this introspective nonsense,' said one British source.

Roland Dumas, the French Foreign Minister, had already instructed his delegation to the UN to start drafting a resolution on enforcement of the no-fly zone. Mr Hurd and Mr Eagleburger, after an hour's bilateral breakfast, were joined by their French counterpart. 'I think it safe to say they are a bit closer to enforcement than we are,' said a British official. 'Of course we are concerned about the Cheshires and all the rest of it, but we are also concerned about the aid operation and sustaining it.'

There were also calls at the CSCE meeting from what were described as 'flaky' quarters for considering lifting the arms embargo on the Bosnian government in order to help the Muslims. This point, as well as the enforcement issue, were put in square brackets in the draft conclusions of the CSCE meeting as the caravan set off for Geneva for round two - the international conference on the former Yugoslavia.

Here, under the chairmanship of Cyrus Vance and Lord Owen, ministers heard warnings from experts such as Sadako Ogata, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, about the extent to which enforcing the no-fly zone might jeopardise the aid effort. The Palais des Nations, built for the failed League of Nations, was redolent with gloom; summiteers gathered under the inscription quoting Robert Cecil, the Conservative statesman who helped to draft the League's charter: 'Here is a great work for peace in which all can participate. The nations must disarm or perish. Be just and fear not.'

The British said the conference, which they called as holders of the EC presidency, had injected 'a breath of realism' into the proceedings. Mr Dumas, on the other hand, claimed privately that his role had been to 'shake a bit of life' into the Vance-Owen process, which he said had not made sufficient progress.

By the time the foreign ministers got to Brussels for the Nato meeting, Bosnia's Serbian warlord, Radovan Karadzic, had written to John Major warning that UN forces would come under attack if the flight ban was enforced. British officials were 'not excited' about the missive, and one declared: 'We are emphatically not in the game of making grandiose statements and then saying 'oops, it's all getting rather difficult'.'

Mr Hurd and Mr Eagleburger, having breakfasted again - this time with Mr Dumas and their German colleague - had by then agreed on the communique formula hinting at a pause in the implementation of enforcement which was to be contained in the resolution. A frisson went through Nato headquarters when the meeting went into overtime - but this was due to a farewell speech from Mr Eagleburger, who good- humouredly described himself as the shortest-serving Secretary of State, appointed by an already defeated president, never approved by Congress, and at most, a footnote in the history books.