JAMES ATKINSON (October 20, 1944 - July 20, 2006), known as Jim, was a fine example of the old school-leaver entrant to the Diplomatic Service who worked his way up to conclude his service as Ambassador to the Democratic Republic of Congo and the neighbouring Congo from 2000 to 2004.

He had transferred to the Diplomatic Service from the Board of Trade in 1966 and served in junior posts in Nicosia and Gaborone before obtaining diplomatic rank as second secretary (commercial) in Damascus in 1976. After four years at home he went to Athens (he was half-Greek on his mother’s side, and indeed was born in Istanbul), thence to Jakarta as first secretary (political and information). He was posted to Kampala in 1993 for four years as deputy head of mission.

He helped to put on a regular footing a mission that had for years subsisted in a dangerous environment, civilianised and relaxed the tight security arrangements of 14 years’ standing and played an important part in the collective observation by outsiders of Uganda’s constituent and, later, first proper elections of the Museveni era.

Atkinson also had a particular responsibility for maintaining the High Commission’s informal links with the Rwandan Popular Front (RPF) during the period in which it conducted its political campaign from Uganda, and whence it launched its invasion of Rwanda. These links were important but sensitive because the French regarded the RPF as a Ugandan and British instrument for subverting part of their claimed francophone sphere of influence.

The British High Commissioner and Atkinson’s boss at the time was simultaneously accredited on a non-resident basis to the old regime of ex-President Habyarimana: it was his violent death in 1994 that launched his regime’s planned systematic extermination of their Tutsi compatriots and other domestic opponents and led to the full-scale civil war from which the RPF emerged victorious. From that followed a violent period in the history of the Great Lakes region, to whose bloody and complex evolutions Atkinson later returned.

Atkinson returned to London in 1997 and was invited to join the Consular Division as its deputy head. He took some persuading to overcome his fear that he was being typecast for a department that had traditionally been thought a cul de sac. In the event, he relished his role at a time when the office sharply raised the profile and importance of consular work.

The reputation of being cool headed in hot spots brought a posting as Ambassador to Kinshasa and (on a non-resident basis) to Brazzaville, so that not even swimming the Congo River offered an escape from a twin assignment most of his colleagues would have avoided. In his four years there, Atkinson saw local suspicions of Britain as irredeemably pro-Rwandan give way to an appreciation of Britain — thanks to Clare Short’s drive — as an influential development partner.

He would have been pleased to see the Congo advancing towards its own elections this week.

Atkinson had good political and common sense; his humour, speech and writing were of the driest; he had done almost every kind of job the Foreign Office affords before becoming an ambassador. He was appointed CMG in 2004.

His wife, Annemieke, married him in 1980, from her own career in the Netherlands public service; she not only supported her husband in his role but also herself worked as a locally recruited member of the British mission.

He is survived by her and by a daughter.

James Atkinson, CMG, diplomat, was born on October 20, 1944. He died of motor neuron disease on July 20, 2006, aged 61.