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EU's Quiet Diplomat Steps Aside After 10 Years

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  • EU's Quiet Diplomat Steps Aside After 10 Years

    EU'S QUIET DIPLOMAT STEPS ASIDE AFTER 10 YEARS
    ANDREW RETTMAN

    EU Observer
    Nov 30 2009

    EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS - EU foreign relations chief Javier Solana,
    who retires this week, will be remembered as a master of quiet,
    behind-the-scenes diplomacy. But campaigners say he should have done
    more to put human rights at the forefront of his work.

    The Spanish politician will on Tuesday (1 December) step aside to make
    way for the union's first "foreign minister" as the Lisbon Treaty
    enters into force. The British official to take up the new post,
    Catherine Ashton, will have a tough act to follow.

    The Spanish politician (r) will step aside on Tuesday after 10 years
    in the post (Photo: kremlin.ru) Print Comment article In his 10
    years in the job Mr Solana has transformed the EU's common foreign
    and security policy from words on paper into a Brussels-based body of
    some 800 military experts and diplomats who co-ordinate the work of 23
    crisis relief missions in hotspots such as the Gulf of Aden and Kosovo.

    He has personally acted as the EU's spokesman and negotiator in around
    600 foreign delegations, clocking up over 2.6 million air miles on
    the way.

    The numbers tell just a small part of the story: with limited support
    from EU states, Mr Solana has relied on his personal charisma,
    quick-wittedness and vim to win the trust of leaders in Balkan,
    post-Soviet and Middle Eastern countries.

    The 67-year-old sleeps five hours a night and still goes running in
    Brussels' Parc de Cinquantenaire. When he retires, he will continue
    to help out in international mediation and to "travel a lot," his
    office said.

    Mr Solana's achievements are often silent or emerge in anecdotes years
    later. In 2001, following the bombing of the Dolphinarium disco in
    Tel Aviv, he persuaded the then Israeli leader Ariel Sharon to put
    off a military response long enough to hammer out a new truce with
    Palestine's Yasser Arafat.

    In 2003, Mr Solana's last-minute call to Moldovan president
    Vladimir Voronin saw him refuse to sign a Russian peace plan, the
    so-called Kozak Memorandum, which could have led to decades of Russian
    domination. "Mr Putin's jet was already warming up on the runway when
    we got the news," Russia's ambassador to the EU, Vladimir Chizhov,
    recalled.

    "I don't think anybody could have done a better job under the
    circumstances. He made Europe visible around the world without
    anybody feeling threatened," former EU commissioner Chris Patten told
    EUobserver. "The Middle East will miss him. He was a unique statesman,"
    left-wing Israeli politician and peace negotiator, Yossi Beilin, said.

    In a point for Ms Ashton to take note of, Mr Solana often had to work
    against the ill will of member states.

    Banana skins

    "EU countries liked to slip him banana skins - to send him into
    situations where they knew there was nothing that could be achieved,"
    Mr Solana's former Middle East security advisor, Alastair Crooke,
    told this website. "On other occasions, he was sent into the corridor
    when the foreign minister from the rotating EU presidency held a
    one-to-one. He was relegated to a note-taker, called in for the photo
    op and the handshake. It wasn't good for his prestige."

    The Spaniard's long career has not been without its gaffes.

    At the signing of a historic peace accord between Turkey and Armenia
    in October, Mr Solana fondly slapped the Armenian foreign minister,
    Edward Nalbandian, around the jowels, causing national affront. The
    clip is still doing the rounds on YouTube.

    The veil of secrecy around his meetings has sometimes hidden
    unflattering moments from view.

    With Mr Solana often credited for helping broker the round table
    agreement in Ukraine in December 2004, which saw the country's
    pre-revolution president, Leonid Kuchma, peacefully stand down, one
    Ukrainian diplomat present at the meeting, Kostyantyn Gryschenko,
    gave EUobserver a different account:

    "Mr Solana and his interpreter couldn't keep up with the fast,
    colloquial Russian being spoken round the table, so they sat there
    silent most of the time. In the end it was [former Polish leader]
    Kwasniewski, who can speak Russian, who took Kuchma aside and said
    'Leonid, Leonid. There is life after the presidency. Just look at me.'"

    Too much realism

    On a more serious note, human rights campaigners do not blame Mr
    Solana for agreeing to the bombing of Serbia in 1999 in his time as
    Nato chief. They are also ready to forgive his support of the Iraq
    war in 2003 as an error based on his personal friendship with US
    general Colin Powell.

    But he has drawn flak for concentrating on conflict resolution in
    Europe and the Middle East at the expense of human rights problems
    in Russia and China and for what some see as his excessive pragmatism
    in the face of power.

    "The general picture is one where human rights took a back seat," Dick
    Oosting, the former Brussels director of Amnesty International, said.

    Human Rights Watch advocate Lotte Leicht, recalled that in January
    2005 Mr Solana torpedoed an EU campaign for the UN to refer Sudan
    to the International Criminal Court in the Hague because he did not
    believe the US would back the move.

    Mr Solana comes across as a "thoroughly decent man" with a "strong
    moral vision" when you speak with him in private, Ms Lotte said. He
    may deliver a tough message in behind-closed-doors talks with world
    leaders, for all we know, she added. But he has not put human rights
    at the heart of the EU's identity in a public way.

    "In terms of quiet diplomacy he has probably performed quite well. But
    in terms of public diplomacy he has not," Ms Lotte said. "It's a
    missed opportunity."
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