Following the conviction last week of Radovan Karadzic for genocide and war crimes, a former British Ambassador to Yugoslavia recalls the Bosnian Serbian leader he knew. Western leaders, he says, should be more outspoken about similar persecutions – this time of Christians – elsewhere

It’s been more than 20 years since the former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic, convicted last week of genocide and crimes against humanity and jailed for 40 years, was one of the best known and most reviled figures in the Europe of the 1990s. I first met him at the height of the Bosnian war in 1994 at the British Embassy residence in Belgrade, when the UK, its Western allies and Russia were trying to broker a peace agreement.

I was expecting a Foreign Office Minister, Douglas Hogg, to arrive for talks with the Serbian President, Slobodan Milosevic,c and the Bosnian Serb political leadership. I had gone to the airport to meet the Minister and when I returned, I found Karadzic, then President of the self-styled Republika Srpska,  had arrived early and was having a cup of tea with his colleagues, Momcilo Krajisnik and Nikola Koljevic. (In 2006, Krajisnik was jailed for 20 years for war crimes; Koljevic committed suicide in 1997).