  The gamma-ray blazar 3C 279 was monitored on a nearly daily basis with IUE,
ROSAT and EGRET for three weeks between December 1992 and January 1993. During
this period, the blazar was at a historical minimum at all wavelengths. Here we
present the UV data obtained during the above multiwavelength campaign. A
maximum UV variation of ~50% is detected, while during the same period the
X-ray flux varied by no more than 13%. At the lowest UV flux level the average
spectrum in the 1230-2700 A interval is unusually flat for this object
(<alpha_UV>~1). The flattening could represent the lowest energy tail of the
inverse Compton component responsible for the X-ray emission, or could be due
to the presence of a thermal component at ~20000 K possibly associated with an
accretion disk. The presence of an accretion disk in this blazar object, likely
observable only in very low states and otherwise hidden by the beamed, variable
synchrotron component, would be consistent with the scenario in which the seed
photons for the inverse Compton mechanism producing the gamma-rays are external
to the relativistic jet. We further discuss the long term correlation of the UV
flux with the X-ray and gamma-ray fluxes obtained at various epochs. All UV
archival data are included in the analysis. Both the X- and gamma-ray fluxes
are generally well correlated with the UV flux, approximately with square root
and quadratic dependences, respectively.
