Hostess: [...] You have been a Foreign Minister. Is this summit a success? It is, no doubt about that, but could it have been a greater success? Could Romania have done more for this summit? I don’t know, maybe, on the diplomatic level. Was there any need of other ideas, other proposals that Romania could have launched? What would you say?

Mihai-Răzvan Ungureanu: I would say there wasn’t. I believe our initiative to host this summit in Bucharest and the way in which the works of the summit unfolded were precisely the goals we have pursued and attained.
If you ask about the list of political-diplomatic topics, I believe they have, obviously been limited by the consensus of all the member states on the agenda.
If you ask about the way in which the summit took place, I can say that both Mr. Victor Micula’s State Secretariat, involved in the political-diplomatic affairs, and those involved in the security issues, among whom the Foreign Intelligence Service played a key role alongside the SRI - in charge of domestic security -, the Protection and Guard Service (SPP), the Ministry of the Interior and Administrative Reform, the Special Telecommunications Service (STS), and all the other institutions that were involved, the Ministry of Health, I can only say that the things went well; we also proved that we can coordinate well, that we have reached maturity, the institutional maturity that allows a very good coordination in stressful times, under the expectations of thousands of people and of all those who hoped that this summit would yield good political results.

Hostess: You are the director of the SIE. What part did this institution play in this summit?

Mihai-Răzvan Ungureanu: A complex one. First of all, the Foreign Intelligence Service was part of the local operational cell, which is a natural thing to do. It checked persons, it double-checked all the items of intelligence, it received and double-checked the intelligence on possible foreign dangers against the persons who were coming to Romania for 3, 4 or 5 days to attend the summit; it verified all the negative scenarios, all those situations that might become crisis situations for us.

Hostess: Were there such situations? Were there any? Did you have a lot of work, or better said, were there any individuals who could have endangered–?

Mihai-Răzvan Ungureanu: I am not talking only about individuals. I am talking about situations in general.

Hostess: Situations in general. Were there any?

Mihai-Răzvan Ungureanu: No, there weren’t. In the sense that the SIE had prevented them several months before, which was a necessary thing to do and which was successful, since today you and your colleagues who are on the set with us are watching the planes taking off rather than, God forbid, watching anything that might have affected the working atmosphere of the summit.

Hostess: Can you give me an example so that we can understand better? We know this is a– well, cryptic institution. Not much is told about what you do, after all, inside the institution. But can you give us an example so that we may find it easier to understand?

Mihai-Răzvan Ungureanu: I am not going to give you an example, but I will present you a type of threat. The existence of terrorist threats and the fact that many of them stem from abroad make us extremely careful. And then, of course, together with our foreign partners with whom we have very good, consolidated relations based on mutual trust, on joint efforts, we managed to find out, to feel, to, in the end, know whether there are any aggressive intentions against the participants in the forum. I am not talking about Romania only, I am talking about persons for whom the level of alert should always be very high in terms of their security, e.g. the president of the United States, or the president of the Russian Federation, or all those who sat at the table in the North Atlantic Council or took part in the parallel meetings.
This made us work together, on matters of prevention, with our counterpart services from all the member states of the North Atlantic Alliance and also from the states that, present or not here, know of terrorist activities aimed at undermining the credibility of the Alliance or threatening the security of some of the attendees.

Hostess: So were there such– I don’t know how to call them, estimations of fears about the security of each important leader present in Bucharest?

Mihai-Răzvan Ungureanu: Yes, there were. Long story short, there are always risks, and we were prepared for these risks. And you always think of the worst scenario, right? [...]
Behind the organisation of a summit, there are many hours of insomnia, there’s an extraordinary tension, which do not imply only episodes, parts of the activity of the special services, but the entire services. You can imagine that, when something goes wrong, besides – God forbid – the victims, the first to suffer are the people in charge of security. You cannot afford that a meeting at such a level and of such importance be questioned or remain in the history as the venue where something bad happened.
And what happened in our country was prepared in due time, and was judged properly. The steps we took towards this very good horizontal coordination between structures on the domestic plane and with foreign partners made, for instance, the officials of various services we work with, to express their appreciation for us and believe that Romania really reached that level of capability that allowed for hosting such a meeting.

Hostess: How long had you prepared, when did the SIE start to get ready for this event?

Mihai-Răzvan Ungureanu: If I were to count all the meetings I had had and tackled this topic, I should say it started over 12 months before.

Hostess: So, about a year of preparations for it. We must say, Mr. Mihai-Răzvan Ungureanu is now the director of the SIE, used to be the foreign minister, and he is – few people have said that – the one who laid the groundwork of this summit, who struggled when the venue of the summit was being discussed. How much did you do or maybe how little? How much did it matter?

Mihai-Răzvan Ungureanu: It mattered that the initiative was launched, no doubt about that. But the crucially important thing was the team, formed inside the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and then the arguments, the high-quality nature of the arguments that we brought when the project had to be presented to the political decision-makers. [...]

Hostess: [...] I wanted to ask you, Mr. Ungureanu, I’ve read in an interview in "Evenimentul zilei" that you were the one who came up with the idea to host this summit and that very few people believed in this project in the beginning. [...]

Mihai Răzvan Ungureanu: Still, the team was formed, it was formed quite quickly, but we have to admit that the political decision-makers’ confidence in this project, and we are talking about a huge project which calls for a lot of intellectual resources within the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, was not seen, was not visible right away. People needed some time; it all started as an adventure, as it usually does, in a relatively well-limited timeframe, within a foreign policy which, starting with 2005, has become more vivid over the years and it was not only concerned with the immediate electoral cycle, and which was somehow acting in concert with the Francophonie Summit in 2006, with the 2008 Summit; a foreign policy that somehow set a pace to our recognized path as a middle-size state in Europe. In the beginning, it was not skepticism, but courtesy; as our chances began to grow, in December 2005 - January 2006, the draft project of the summit, which had already acquired concrete form on paper, was debated, approved and embraced per se. And it became an obsession, one that entailed both passions and quite a lot of fatigue. Some were discouraged, others have gone all the way, and now we can see the result.

Hostess: Who were those with the obsession?

Mihai Răzvan Ungureanu: President Traian Băsescu played a crucial role, he turned the summit into a permanent topic of the foreign policy in 2006. Prime Minister Călin Popescu-Tăriceanu had the same topic on his foreign policy agenda, and he mentioned it each time the situation allowed, but the Ministry of Foreign Affairs did the hard part. Although it underwent successive changes on top, the Ministry of Defense, regrouped and gathered the energy to continue the project, and now, in my current capacity, I have to say that the institution I am honored to represent has shown the same interest in assuring this successful event throughout the past year. [...]