WHENEVER a crisis breaks in some corner of the world requiring measured reason and patient intervention it is said that a cry goes out within the Washington DC beltway - call Cyrus Vance.
The familiar troubleshooter himself - his face a visage of kindliness - laughs loudly when Keeping Posted reminds him of the fact as we talk in the Governor's Suite at the Grand Hyatt.
''I've answered that call a few times over the years,'' says Vance, secretary of state during the Jimmy Carter presidency. ''I find it hard to refuse if it is a cause that I feel to be important.'' Most recently the call came from the Secretary-General of the United Nations, Dr Boutros Boutros-Ghali, who gave Vance - who has previously arbitrated when trouble brewed in South Africa, Turkey, Cyprus, Korea and even nearer home during the race riots inDetroit - the sisyphean task of ending the savage fighting in Bosnia.
Vance, whose anguished face appeared regularly on worldwide news broadcasts as he struggled valiantly to bring some civility to a situation that had turned barbaric, finally gave up a few months ago after, as he explains, ''it became clear to me that we just could not find a solution''.
A lawyer by profession, New York-based Vance has been in Hong Kong with his wife, Grace, to make arrangements to open a local branch of his law firm, Simpson, Thacher & Bartlett.
''I am following what is going on between China and Hong Kong with great interest,'' he said. ''I've discussed the issues with the people involved on both sides and my own view is that even though things are difficult, it would be possible to work a way through between now and 1997.
