The killing of 8,000 Muslims at Srebrenica during the Bosnian war was a myth staged to vilify the Serbs accused of their murder, former leader Radovan Karadzic claimed today.

A grimy three-carriage train pulled out of Belgrade’s railway station today on the first direct trip to Sarajevo in nearly 18 years, restoring a link broken at the start of ethnic warfare in the former Yugoslavia.

Sarajevo. What does the name conjure up in your mind? Aerial bombardments in the 1990s are one possibility; the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand by Gavrilo Princip, triggering the First World War, is another.