A fourth is that the Bosnian Serbs will step up their intransigence and, in effect, dare the world to take them on. That is likely to mean increased risks for the British and other Western UN peacekeeping troops in Bosnia.The best way to meet these challenges is for the West to stick to the plan as drawn up in May, and not to complicate the situation further by getting more deeply involved. If the arms ban on the Muslims is not lifted, then Mr Yeltsin should be able to keep his domestic critics at bay. If the Muslims maintain their support for the plan, then the outside world should be able to count on Serbia’s continuing isolation of the Bosnian Serbs.

But if the West tries to go beyond the plan, then it will unravel.The most likely source of resistance is obviously the Bosnian Serb camp. But since May their position has grown increasingly precarious. Provided that outside pressure is kept up within the framework of the plan, the Bosnian Serbs will have to succumb, and the use of Western force can be kept to a minimum.. AS I GROW older, the matter of how the English speak English becomes more urgent for me. This is not because of high-minded concern for syntax or elocution It is because I am getting deafer.

If, like me, you suffer from tinnitus (a sizzling in the ears brought on, in my case, by a Bren gun), you tend to miss consonants and rely on vowels But English vowels are no longer predictable. A report in the Independent the other day described changes in the speech of Milton Keynes. Children there are not only losing local Buckinghamshire pronunciation, if they ever had it, but melding their speech into uniform, Londonish sounds. They say ‘ahm’ for arm, ‘naa-it’ for night, and ‘le’er’ for letter. (The last is good for me, because a glottal stop is easier to hear than most consonants.) The other day I drove from Wiltshire to rural Essex, and was astonished to notice how plainly a mere hundred miles or so still separates rounded Wessex vowels from nasal Anglian.