Wareing, who was Chairman of the All-Party British-Yugoslav Parliamentary Group from 1994, held talks in 1995 with the Bosnian Serb leaders Radovan Karadžić and General Ratko Mladić. Wareing told neither his constituency party, nor the Labour Party nationally about his intention to meet Karadžić, who was then wanted for war crimes, during his visit to the Serb controlled areas of Bosnia. Wareing, who was accompanied by the Conservative peer Lord Harlech, was not directly criticised at the time by Tony Blair, the Labour leader, although Blair's spokesman did distance him from Wareing.