"Frankly, there is a limit to what we can do," said Colonel Coward. "We are in a peacekeeping mode here."

But there is no peace to keep, of course, and that is the basic conundrum of the United Nations mission here. The French Government, with presidential elections looming, did try to muster a more forthright response, dispatching Defense Minister Francois Leotard to the Bosnian capital this weekend.

Before he left today, Mr. Leotard expressed his "indignation and rage" at the deaths of the French soldiers, and said, "We have always considered the hypothesis of a United Nations withdrawal from Bosnia a realistic one." There are 24,000 United Nations soldiers in Bosnia, of whom 4,200 -- the largest contingent -- are French.

But the fact is that a threat of a withdrawal has been made once too often. It rings hollow, especially to the embittered people of Sarajevo, who are generally tired of the United Nations anyway. The questions the inhabitants of this town want answered are: Why is the city still surrounded, and why can it not be opened to the world?

"I cannot look at myself in the mirror in the morning when I have to shave," said Asa Sehovic, a doctor who is Muslim. "I feel I will go crazy if I do. Three years -- it's enough. A few months ago I would not have said this, but I say now the time has come to fight. Even if it is hard, we have to free this city and free our brother Serbs from the leaders who have led them to madness."

President Alija Izetbegovic said this month that the city would not go through another winter of encirclement. But the capacity of the Bosnian Army to fight its way out of the city -- and then hold the ground -- against massed Serbian artillery appears doubtful.

Nowhere is the regression in the city more apparent than at the central marketplace, where a mortar attack that killed more than 60 people in February of last year prompted an ultimatum from the North Atlantic Treaty Organization that fleetingly brought new hope to the city.