Bosnia is under my skin. It's the place you cannot leave behind. I was obsessed by the nightmare of it all; there was this sense of guilt, and an anger that has become something much deeper over these last years.

I don't think Bosnia is ready for reconciliation, but I do think it is ready for truth.

My second job has been to try to use my power to create institutions of a modern state that could enter the European Union, and there was very little time. The door was closing, and I wanted to get Bosnia through before it shut.

We have to make their livelihoods viable, get them the proper prices for their produce, try and make them stay rather than sell their property and leave again.

I've had much nastier things said about me in the British press than in the Bosnian press.

We who came here saw what was happening. This was far more than a war in a faraway place. This was a moral imperative, a terrible vision of the future.