ABSTRACT
Two points should be made before I begin. One is that there is no such thing as the international community: it is essentially the gang of seven, consisting of the United States, Russia, France, Great Britain, Germany, Italy and the European Union as such. The second is that the gang of seven were overwhelmingly preoccupied with their own interests. So when I go through my contribution today you may scratch your heads a couple of times and think, why are they talking about EU integration or the election of President Clinton or various other issues; but I'm hoping to give you a perspective on a multitude of distractions which unfortunately faced the gang of seven when they were trying to deal with this very serious crisis.
