Paul Bergne

Alexander Paul A'Court Bergne, intelligence officer, diplomat, writer and broadcaster: born London 9 January 1937; ambassador to Uzbekistan 1993-95, and to Tajikistan 1994-95; principal research officer, Research and Analysis Department, Foreign and Commonwealth Office 1995-96; OBE 1985, CBE 2002; staff, London Information Network on Conflicts and State Building 1998-2002; Specialist Adviser, House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee 1999-2000; Prime Minister's personal representative for Afghan Affairs 2001; married 1963 Susanne Wittich (one son, one daughter); died Upper Slaughter, Gloucestershire 5 April 2007.

When he asked Paul Bergne to be his personal representative to the Northern Alliance and others in opposition to the Taliban in Afghanistan in October 2001, the Prime Minister recalled to the colours Britain's principal diplomatic and intelligence expert in Central Asia on a mission for which he was uniquely qualified. The results ensured a strong British voice in the subsequent campaign and helped avert potential disaster when Bergne was able to intercede with the Alliance and prevent their opposition to British special forces landing without warning at Bagram airfield shortly after the capture of Kabul.

Bergne combined careers as a diplomat, intelligence officer and academic with a formidable ability in languages and a modest, engaging character that made him an outstanding personality in Britain's international relationships in the Middle East and Central Asia over the past 50 years. His linguistic ability was extraordinary by any standards: he was fluent in German, Greek, Persian, Russian, Arabic and French, and had a working knowledge of Turkish, Uzbek and Italian. One of his fellow students at the Foreign Office's Centre for Arabic Studies in Lebanon described him as doubly irritating: "He was far better than anyone else, but extraordinarily modest, nice, and encouraging to the rest of us."

Bergne's career with the Secret Intelligence Service (SIS) from 1959 to 1992 involved overseas postings in Vienna (where he met and married Susanne Wittich), Tehran, Abu Dhabi, Cairo, Athens and Hong Kong. He managed in each to combine his diplomatic and other duties with the pursuit not only of his linguistic and professional interests, but also with contributions in the academic sphere. He published papers on Sasanian palaces in Iran, on flint artefacts in Eastern Arabia, and on the pottery of Egypt's Dakhleh Oasis. A seminal piece in the Architectural Review in 1978, "Cairo: can the medieval city be saved?" brought international attention to this issue at an important time for the conservation of one of the world's largest medieval centres.

His colleagues describe his contribution to the work of SIS as being remarkable, both personally and professionally. He was appointed OBE when he left Athens in 1985 for an act of personal courage in the course of his duties there. After retirement in 1992, Bergne was asked by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office's Research Department to work as their specialist on the Central Asian states and Azerbaijan. His rare knowledge and expertise in this area in the time following the break-up of the Soviet Union made an important contribution both to government policy development and to wider understanding in academic circles. During this period he was briefly attached to the British Embassy in Ankara and later seconded to the Organisation for Security and Co- Operation in Europe, and also found time to complete his master's in Modern Turkish Studies at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London.

From 1993 to 1995, Bergne was the UK's first ambassador to Uzbekistan and Tajikistan. This involved setting the embassy up from scratch (the premises were initially a hotel room in Tashkent) and establishing political, commercial and cultural links for the UK in the area for the first time. His wry review in last month's Asian Affairs journal of the biography of one of his successors, Craig Murray, reveals that Murray was not the first British ambassador to confront the Uzbek government on human rights and governance. After leaving Tashkent, Bergne was part of the OSCE/UN team monitoring the parliamentary elections in Azerbaijan.

After his second retirement (from the FCO) in 1996, Bergne began working with undiminished energy on the academic side of the Central Asian, Turkic and Iranian world. He returned to Afghanistan in 2002 and 2003 for the Westminster Foundation for Democracy and on a study of the British government's conflict resolution efforts for Bradford University's Institute of Peace Studies. He was a director of Links (the London Information Network on Conflict Resolution and State Building) from 1998 to 2002, a task that took him on regular visits to Georgia, Azerbaijan, Russia and Central Asia. His principal academic base was St Antony's College, Oxford, where he lectured and taught on the early history of the Soviet republics of Central Asia. From 1999 to 2002 he was the regional head for Central Asia for Oxford Analytica, the international consultancy company. He was appointed CBE in 2002.

The past seven years saw a prolific period of lecturing, articles in learned journals, and organising and participating in seminars and conferences on all aspects of Central Asia. Bergne also contributed extensively to BBC World Service programmes, in Persian, Arabic, and Russian, as well as English. One series, in 2001, covered Persian studies in the UK, another, in 1997, the Silk Road, another, in 1999, described London for Persian listeners. In 2003 Bergne founded and was the director of the Oxford Society for the Caspian and Central Asia. His book The Birth of Tajikistan: national identity and the origins of the republic is due for publication this month.

This list of remarkable achievements does little justice to the sheer pleasure that I and many others of all kinds and nationalities had in having known Paul Bergne, whom I first met as his next-door neighbour in Cairo. It does not record his wit, his enthusiasms, his ability to listen, the way his interests were on a renaissance and a catholic scale, and how he kept his roots firmly in his family wherever he was, with his wife Susanne, daughter Theresa and son Sebastian, all with international reputations of their own in art and design. He had an enduring personal and professional impact throughout his several careers.

Peter Mackenzie Smith