Yuri Karlov

First - and last - Soviet ambassador to the Vatican

Yuri Yevgenievich Karlov, diplomat: born 3 January 1937; ambassador to the Vatican 1989-95; died Moscow 12 December 2002.

For almost its entire existence, the Soviet Union had no official relations with the Vatican. When that was belatedly overturned, three months after Mikhail Gorbachev's historic visit to Pope John Paul II in December 1989, Yuri Karlov became the first – and last – Soviet ambassador to the Holy See.

Karlov's most crucial moment came in the run-up to the 1991 Gulf War. The Pope wrote last-minute appeals for restraint to President George Bush and Saddam Hussein. In the absence of normal diplomatic communications, Saddam's response was passed on to the Pope by Karlov. He also kept the Pope closely informed on Gorbachev's ultimately fruitless diplomatic peace offensive.

As the Soviet Union disintegrated at the end of 1991, Karlov continued as ambassador of the Russian Federation, shortly after he had accompanied Boris Yeltsin on his first encounter with the Pope. Karlov and the Russian Foreign Ministry never succeeded in overcoming opposition from the Russian Orthodox Church to establishing full diplomatic relations between Moscow and the Holy See and ties have been stuck ever since at the stage of "working relations" that were established in March 1990.

Born in Belorussia in 1937, Karlov studied at the prestigious Moscow State Institute for International Relations. He later gained a doctorate at the Academy of Sciences with a thesis on the legal aspects of the Vatican's international relations. On entering the Foreign Ministry in 1961, he served for the next two years in the Soviet embassy in Bucharest before returning to Moscow to join the ministry's First European Department, which covered the southern European states.

From 1967 to 1972 he gained a coveted posting at the Soviet embassy in Rome, to where he returned for a second stint from 1978 to 1984 (while also serving as general consul in San Marino). In 1986 he moved to the Soviet representation to the United Nations cultural organisation Unesco, where he served until his nomination to the newly created representation to the Holy See in 1990.

After completing his assignment to the Vatican in 1995, Karlov served as President Yeltsin's personal representative on the Transdniester conflict between the Moldovan authorities and the separatist region which was refusing to submit to the Moldovan government's authority. Karlov continued Russia's backing for the separatist regime and obstructed international attempts to broker a withdrawal of the Russian armed forces and Soviet-era arsenals that kept the regime in power.

On retiring in 1998, Karlov returned to teaching, mainly in the area of international law. He was always happy to give lectures in Italian universities.

It was at the Vatican that Karlov found his role. Vatican officials found him easy to work with, citing his cordiality, intellect and sincerity and praising his belief in dialogue. Claiming that the "great" Metropolitan Nikodim – who was bishop of Leningrad for 15 years until his death in 1978 in the arms of Pope John Paul I – had "personally converted me to the Orthodox faith", like his mentor Karlov combined a commitment to the Orthodox Church with a desire to see rapprochement with the Catholic Church.

Felix Corley