In 1991 Mr Hurd fought hardest against any military entanglement involving the EC, Western European Union or Nato. The West could have been dragged into a much bigger Balkan conflagration. But the diplomatic failure in 1991 first to perceive, then to act pre-emptively on a threat to regional instability still racks high-level consciences.In quieter moments senior foreign policy-makers involved at the time, such as Hans van den Broek (who was EC President in late 1991) and Douglas Hurd, concede self-doubt about opportunities missed for decisive pre-emption on Yugoslavia. Military involvement was never considered a realistic option; diplomacy was always behind the curve of the conflict. History may be kinder to the leading powers for refusing to use the unequivocal threat of military intervention as a diplomatic tool to pre-empt a wider war.

Despite the dispatch of EC mediation missions and the appointment of Lord Carrington, we now know that most of the effort was what one senior diplomat involved at the time described as "well-intentioned diplomatic froth".As in Chechnya today, in the first half of 1991 the Yugoslavia crisis was "an internal matter". There h a s been a failure of conflict perception and an international willingness to indulge in wishful thinking for the best-case scenario, instead of even contemplating the bloody, worst-case scenario that has come to pass.Yet if governments cannot accurately read the early signals and draw the necessary policy conclusions, what chance is there to prevent the dozens of regional conflicts predicted elsewhere by many analysts and humanitarian organisations? Four years ago, when blood was already being shed at the start of the Yugoslav crisis, the then European Community spearheaded diplomatic efforts with regular declarations of condemnation and outrage. As in Rwanda, the West has no direct interest in the Caucasus; as with Bosnia prevention and pre-emption were not in the diplomatic armoury. In the fifth week of President Kuchma's horrible "first-blood phase", the US State Department, "after considerable review of the information", concluded that "Russia has not fulfilled all of its commitments under the OSCE and the Helsinki Final Act".Even talk of dispatching an OSCE mediation team did not come until three weeks into the Russian assault. In a lette r to Yeltsin, President Clinton expressed concern about enormous civilian casualties". Vice-President Gore labelled the bloodletting a "terrible mistake".

From India the Foreign Secretary, Douglas Hurd, sent a diplomatic note to the Russian foreign minist er, Andrei Kozyrev, whose role in the day-to-day handling of the Chechnya crisis appears marginal.And to what practical end? Within days Russia was openly violating its Budapest commitment that when engaged on internal security operations "the armed forces will take due care to avoid injury to civilians or their property". As Russian troops moved block by block towards the centre of Grozny, Chancellor Kohl phoned his "friend" Boris Yeltsin and asked him to rethink what he undiplomatically called this "complete madness". We know from the conflict in Bosnia that by the time peacekeepers arrive it is often too late to prevent the spread of conflict." But where were the international "diagnostics"? Have leading governments adopted a new principle of prevention and speedy pre-emption? It has, after all, been their avowed intention since 1991 and the catastrophic failures of diplomacy to identify the signals and pre-empt the looming war in what was still Yugoslavia.The Budapest principles appear stillborn. to forecast the most horrible first-blood phase in conflicts, after which the conflicts become unforecasted and uncontrolled". Jean Chretien,Prime Minister of Canada, long a ge n erous troop provider for UN peace operations, urged: "We must learn from our mistakes We need to give new life to preventative diplomacy.

He demanded "early diagnostics (sic) of explosion-threatening situations and conflicts ... With an instinctive understanding and mistrust for Russia to his north, the Ukraine President, Leonid Kuchma, appealed, almost prophetically, for an urgent pooling of foreign policy resources. The new principle explicitly underpinned the declarations of 52 heads of state and government - including President Yeltsin - at the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) summit in Budapest in early December, five days before Russia's ground assault on Grozny. Potential regional conflicts must be identified, tackled at root, then snuffed out bef ore they become deadly, uncontrolled military conflagrations in which diplomacy has no role.