You're listening to a podcast from the BBC World Service. This is Hard Talk with me, Stephen Sacker.

Thanks for downloading this edition of the program. I do hope you enjoy it.

Welcome to Hard Talk on the BBC World Service with me, Stephen Sacker. My guest today is an

international diplomat who, for more than a decade, decade enjoyed that strange label UN Peace Envoy.

Stefan de Mistura, a polyglot with roots in Sweden and Italy, sought to pacify Iraq after 2007,

Afghanistan a couple of years later, and most recently Syria in the period from 2014 to 18. Given what is happening in all

of those countries today, one can only conclude his success was limited. But maybe that's because

the very idea of the collective international community imposing its will on warring parties and

dictators has lost its currency.

We live in a world where interests Trump values and diplomacy is transactional.

At least that's the way it looks to outsiders.

What does it feel like to a man who's been at the sharp end of international diplomacy for decades.

Well, Stefan de Mistura joins me now.

Welcome to Hard Talk.

Thank you.

It is pretty much a year since you left your post as the UN envoy in Syria.

You've had time for reflection.

Do you think that mission was doomed from the very moment you took it?

I've been thinking exactly about that. When I was asked to do, take up this mission after

20 other missions in the past, it was told that it was mission impossible. And two remarkable

negotiators, Kofihan and Lacta Brahimi had given up.

And in fact, they only served, well, Brahimi's case, I think a couple of years, Kofi Annan's case, only six months. And then he said it was an impossible job. Exactly. Was it maybe a little arrogance that led you to believe you could do something different? Well, no, I don't want to believe it was arrogance because I refused actually at the beginning.

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