'The real game has little to do with Yugoslavia': Annika Savill, Diplomatic Editor, on the hidden motives behind the world's attempts to resolve the Balkan conflict

THE EC, the French, the WEU, Nato, G7, the CSCE and the UN - they've all stuck their fingers into the Yugoslav pie at one time or another, and not one has anything to show for it except sticky fingers.

Yesterday, the situation was summed up by a European official: 'We all jumped in to show that Europe can do it. Now, we all realise there's precious little capital in Yugoslavia because it's not amenable to a quick success. So we're trying to get out of it with the least egg on our faces, while still claiming that we passed the test. And that means claiming great achievements like EC 'ceasefires', sending the tabs for manpower and money to the UN, while not letting the UN do what it could properly do if we were to do it through the proper channels.'

No wonder Boutros Boutros-Ghali, the UN Secretary-General, says he told Lord Carrington on the telephone that to expect the few overstretched UN troops in Bosnia to confiscate heavy weaponry was 'not realistic in respect of the responsibilities envisaged for Unprofor'.

No wonder, too, that Lord Carrington admitted he 'did not disagree': although UN Resolution 752, adopted in May, made reference to confiscation of arms, British diplomats were quick to point out yesterday that Mr Boutros-Ghali had not presented the report requested of him on how this would be achieved.

On Monday, while more Bosnians were dying in the ceasefire cobbled together by the Carrington conference, EC foreign ministers were sitting in Brussels arguing about a comma. Should the declaration on Yugoslavia read the 'peace conference chaired by Lord Carrington' or the 'peace conference, chaired by Lord Carrington'? The punctuation seemed crucial to the message the British were determined to impress upon the French - that Carrington is still what they like to call 'the only show in town'.

One European official said yesterday: 'The real game being pursued here has little or nothing to do with Yugoslavia.'

President Mitterrand publicly upped the stakes of the game when he decided to walk the streets of Sarajevo at the end of May. He upped them again when France threatened to send attack helicopters and non-UN personnel to Sarajevo, forcing General Lewis MacKenzie, the UN commander there, to head them off. A British official said: 'MacKenzie had no brief to attack anyone, and the French deliberately blew the distinction between peace-keeping and peace-making.'

This was war within the European Community. Take, for instance, efforts to enforce the embargo against what remains of Yugoslavia. After the Anglo- American and Franco-Italian camps appeared to be heading for a showdown at G7 two weeks ago, Nato and the WEU agreed on the margins of the CSCE summit to make peace and send an armada to the Adriatic.

But, said a Western analyst, 'the armada is meaningless so long as it does not have the power to stop and search suspect vessels. For it to have that, we would need another UN resolution. And we do not want to have another UN resolution because we would then have to decide who should be mandated by the UN to do it. The WEU? Nato? The EC? The French would want the WEU mandated, while the British do not want to let go of Nato's role, and neither do the Americans, but the Americans don't want to have a row with the French.'

America's role is further complicated by the fact that it does not want to disturb its relationship with the Greeks, highly sensitive on the Yugoslav-Macedonia question, while Washington is pursuing a separate diplomatic gambit on Cyprus.

In addition, a new resolution on Yugoslavia would require the vote of President Yeltsin, who is under pressure at home not to go along with further measures against fellow Slavs. And, as a British source said, 'we all know this is not a good moment to add to poor Yeltsin's domestic problems'.