NATO SUMMIT IN BUCHAREST
- April 2-4, 2008 -

HOW BUCHAREST BECAME THE HUB OF NATO FOR 3 DAYS
Mihai-Răzvan Ungureanu gives a detailed account of how Romania won the competition for hosting the summit.

"«Give it a try», the President and the Prime Minister told me. It all sounded so unrealistic, that I think they were only trying to be nice. During the first talks, this idea was seen as rather unlikely to come true. When Condoleezza Rice came to Bucharest, we knew we stood a chance”.

After thousands of hours of background reading, after hundreds of phone calls all over the world, after tens of probing meetings, and after a few moments of suspense, good news came. These were the main ingredients in the organization process of the NATO Summit in April – an event which has made front page in Romania for a few weeks.

Former Foreign Minister and current SIE Director Mihai-Răzvan Ungureanu accepted to reveal to the EVZ some of the backstage diplomatic efforts that made Romania the point zero of the world between 2 and 4 April. Ungureanu remembers that the NATO Summit, despite missing from the Romanian public agenda for over two years, continuously floated all this time behind sound-proof doors and on the satellite short telephone lines that link our country to NATO.

Băsescu and Tăriceanu were skeptical

“Everything started at the beginning of 2005, with a question that I rhetorically asked: “What if …?”. I do not remember how it occurred to me. I was at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, with some of the people I worked with in the minister’s cabinet”, Ungureanu recalls. The first people he conveyed this idea to were President Traian Băsescu and Prime Minister Călin Popescu-Tăriceanu.
Both of them answered rather skeptically, but neither of them tried to thwart the project: “During the first talks, this idea was thought quite unlikely to come true. It was as if someone came and said “Let’s bring the Moon down to Earth…”. They just gave me the same answer: “Give it a try…”. It all sounded so unrealistic, that I think they were just trying to be nice”, Ungureanu says now, slightly amused.

The former Foreign Minister remembers that the President and the Prime Minister were a bit more optimistic a few months later, when they saw the project in written form: “We worked on it in parallel with the preparations for the Francophonie Summit. That is when I realized what it really means, that one has to think of everything, from security teams to hotel rooms and ball-point pens. When the Prime Minister and the President saw the organization and financial projection on paper, both seemed more confident” Ungureanu says.

The Summit born on a hospital bed in Vienna

Once the idea took root, it was conveyed straight on the famous Bucharest-Washington axis. Its messenger was Sorin Ducaru, Ambassador to the United States. “Whether the first answer was encouraging I do not know; what I do know is that it was not discouraging. During the visit in Washington in early 2005, I presented this idea to Condoleezza Rice. The probing went on both in Washington, and at NATO. The first really encouraging answer came on December 5, when Condoleezza Rice came to Bucharest.

Then I knew we stood a chance”, the former head of the diplomacy told us.

Meanwhile, his obsession had already been shared by others: President Băsescu had become very interested in the project, which he continued to work on even during his forced “stay” in Vienna, in May 2006, when he was hospitalised in order to undergo spinal surgery. Sources inside Cotroceni Palace told us that the head of state was constantly requesting reports about the organization of the summit. His main contact on the subject was Presidential Advisor Anca Ilinoiu.

One step away from losing the US support

Shortly after he was released from hospital, Băsescu travelled to the US with two priorities on his agenda: the situation in Kosovo and the NATO Summit. On his return, the conclusion he shared with his closest circle was a bit more optimistic, yet still reserved: It is worth to keep trying.
Băsescu’s reserve had a reason: the relation between Romania and the US had been shaken in the summer of 2006, when the Liberals had called for the withdrawal of our troops from Iraq. Suddenly, Romania, such a loyal US ally up to the point where it had become the subject of urban folklore about “fireflies”, had joined the club of the “not-so-trustworthy”.
As for this incident, Ungureanu, who was perceived back then as a traitor inside the PNL for having voted against the withdrawal in the Country’s Supreme Defence Council, refrains from providing any details. Nevertheless, he says that “Romania’s decision to maintain its troops in Iraq was a very strong argument in deciding that our country should host the summit.”
“I think everyone in the ministry hated me“
While the Romanian political VIPs were lobbying for the summit among the world’s power brokers, the workload within the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Bucharest was increasing exponentially.
“I think that 2006 was the toughest year for the ministry employees. We were also working on the Francophonie Summit, the EU integration, and the summit. There were tens of files in progress at the same time; everyone was making phone calls from dawn till midnight. I think that by the end of the year, everyone hated me”, the former minister says. The image best preserved in his memory from that particular period is a table:

“There was a board on the wall of my office, and Sorin Ducaru had one in his as well. It looked like a chart. The rows showed the NATO member states and the columns contained the three answer options: Yes, No and Don’t know. Every week we would change the chart and highlight the countries in different colours: green was for Yes, red was for No, black was for Don’t know.

IRONY - Ungureanu watches the Summit on TV

The Romanian diplomatic equation still included a variable: Portugal, who had already given up organizing the summit once, leaving Latvia host in 2006. Romania’s joining this race took the Portuguese by surprise and was followed by sensitive moments, according to Ungureanu:
“It was a battle that has extended to the CAGRE (General Affairs and External Relations Council in Brussels) as well. The Portuguese Foreign Minister was sitting right next to me and we were trying to reach an agreement. He was telling me his Prime Minister would not let him give up; I was replying that we, as well, truly wanted to be the organizers”. Nonetheless, the former head of diplomacy says that the competition between Bucharest and Lisbon had never really become tense: “It was a competition on equal footing. At no time did we claim that Portugal should not host it, but we said why we should do it”.

Mihai-Răzvan Ungureanu received the news he had been awaiting for two years a few days prior to his resignation from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, triggered by the scandal of the Romanian workers arrested in Iraq. “It was in spring 2007 and I had just announced that I would leave the Ministry. It was then that we had the certainty that Romania had unanimously been chosen to host the summit. The first person I called was my Head of Cabinet. Then I immediately called Sorin Ducaru, who already knew and who started calling everyone to inform the President and the Prime Minister. Then I managed to talk to Sorin. I promised we would toast a glass of wine for the news. We still have not got the chance to do this”. Mihai-Răzvan Ungureanu will watch the summit on the TV set in his office at the SIE HQ. He has two reasons to keep away from the Palace of Parliament: “First of all, the heads of the intelligence services do not publicly get involved in this kind of events. Secondly, I know too many people there to force them to shake hands with me. These two worlds are separated by a definite line. I do have friends in that environment, but I will meet them unofficially”

Source: Evenimentul Zilei, by Oana Dobre, March 26, 2008

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