bout de papier, Vol. 5, No. 4 (1988) — Winter 1988 // Hiver 1988, pp. 16–17
Whenever, in retirement, I read in the newspapers that a Head of State or Head of Government is going to visit Ottawa, and when I reflect on all the arrangements that have to be made and all the flaps that can occur, my mind goes back to the summer of 1973 when M. Nicolai Causescu, President of the State Council of Romania, and Mme. Ceausescu, made a State Visit to Ecuador, accompanied by their 19-year-old son and 21-year-old daughter, the Romanian Minister of Foreign Affairs, M. George Macuvescu, the Minister of Foreign Commerce and Vice-President of the Council of Ministers, M. Ion Patan, the Minister of Mines and Petroleum, M. Bujor Almazan, ten senior government officials, several officials of the Romanian Communist Party, a contingent of security guards, a food-taster, a tailor, and a barber-hairdresser — a total entourage of 81.
President Ceausescu had by that time the justifiable reputation of having achieved a greater degree of flexibility in foreign policy than any of his neighbours in the Soviet-dominated Eastern European bloc. If, for that reason, the Ecuadorians had any illusions that the Romanians would be less demanding of their hosts, they were in for a rude shock. I was Canadian Ambassador to Colombia at the time, accredited also to Ecuador, and I had to go down to its capital, Quito, on business just as the Romanians were leaving. Everyone in town seemed to be talking of nothing else.
To begin with, I learned that it was the Romanians who had pressed for the visit, to which the Ecuadorians had finally agreed, in view of their growing discoveries of oil and the possibility of discussing petroleum matters with an important European producer.
The first wrangle began — long before the honoured guests arrived – over their accommodation. The local practice is to house distinguished visitors in the Hotel Intercontinential Quito, probably the most spectacularly-located hotel in all Latin America, with a breathtaking view over tropical valleys and the High Andes, including three perpetually snow-covered extinct volcanoes. And it is a well-appointed, well-run establishment indeed.
However an advance party that had come over from Bucharest insisted that their President should be housed in a private villa So the hosts went to some trouble to secure one but, understandably, they could not find anyone with the appropriately-appointed mansion who would be willing to give it up for the required time.
To their surprise, the advance party said they had found one themselves. But it would need some fixing up, to the tune of around $7,000 — a large sum in the local currency and in pre-inflation 1973. To this, the Ecuadorians dug in their heels; the house for which the Romanians had been pushing, incidentally, happened to be the property of a leading member of the local Communist Party.
At this impasse, the advance party finally agreed that the Causescus be housed in the Intercontinental’s Presidential Suite. But they insisted on different furniture. The hosts reluctantly agreed, assuming in their bewilderment that this unusual change was requested because of Romanian concern about concealed bugging devices.
But the advance party then insisted that the colour scheme in the Presidential Suite would not suit the Causescus — and the astonished Ecuadorians consented to a quite-unneeded paint job. And just before the arrival, the advance party insisted that the curtains be changed — to achieve greater harmony of surroundings.
For visits of this kind, it is the long-established, internationally-accepted practice for the host country to pay for the accommodation and hospitality it offers, and for the guests to pay for the function they offer in reciprocation. Ecuadorian President Rodriguez Lara would offer, inter alia, a State Banquet, and the Romanians would offer a buffet dinner at the hotel in reciprocation. But they wanted their hosts to pay for the buffet — at which the Ecuadorians again had to dig in their heels; and they said that if their visitors wished to omit the return hospitality it would be quite all right – and if not they would, as is customary, have to pay for it.
With such contentious prolegomena, it is perhaps remarkable that the visit did actually take place, but it did, and the contretemps continued for the duration.
When the Ecuadorian Chief of Protocol dropped in the Ministry’s kitchen to see how preparations were going for the luncheon the Foreign Minister would be attending, he was forcibly ejected by some Romanians who insisted that they would be preparing the food. After President Rodriguez Lara’s wife, ill in hospital, sent Mme. Ceausescu a beautiful gold bracelet and necklace as a gift, you can imagine her astonishment at receiving — in flower-prolific Ecuador of all places — a bouquet of three carnations in return, the equivalent in Ottawa of a couple of daffodils in April or a couple of tulips in May. Whenever I checked into the Intercontinental Quito, I would find a dozen carnations or orchids in my room, courtesy of the management; the recipient of three carnations in Ecuador, especially in the gift-exchanging context, could not be blamed if she interpreted this as a studied insult, or put-down.
In any event, because of the illness of the President’s wife, the wife of the Foreign Minister had a tea for Mme. Ceausescu to meet the wives of Cabinet Ministers. Mme. C. arrived, drank half a cup of tea, said she was tired — which the ladies assumed would be due to Quito’s 9,200-feet altitude — but then embarked on a strenuous sightseeing tour.
For another luncheon, being offered by the Ecuadorian Foreign Minister, the Chief of Protocol dropped by the Intercontinental to pick up and escort President Ceausescu. But without any warning, the President said he didn’t want to go and would be grateful if the lunch were cancelled. To this the Chief of Protocol responded that the lunch would go on as planned, since his Minister would not wish to embarrass the other guests, and that if the President did not wish to attend, the Ecuadorian Government would consider the visit to be at an end.
Despite these vicissitudes — making one wonder why on earth these things are ever undertaken in the first place — the State Visit went on, although the contretemps were by no means concluded.
The two Presidents had fixed a time for a ceremonial signing of a Joint Declaration. Prominent guests had been invited to watch, the press would be on hand, and radio and TV time had been booked with satellite feeds and all the other paraphernalia of modern telecommunications required to draw the attention of the outside world to the great event unfolding in this isolated capital in the High Andes.
As the agreed time drew near, M. Ceausescu wanted to keep the Ecuadorian President and his distinguished guest waiting an hour or so — because he wanted to receive a local Communist Party delegation in his hotel. The way the Ecuadorians fielded this one was to say that that would be quite all right — but that there would be no Joint Declaration if the President of Romania did not keep his appointment with the President of Ecuador.
Then there was the little matter of M. Ceausescu taking it upon himself to invite two Communist Party leaders from each Ecuadorian province to meet him — not in his hotel suite but in the Presidential Palace; as this was a quite extra-curricular, ad hoc, affair, the Ecuadorians handled it by simply refusing the invitees entry to the palace.
Having gone this far I might as well mention one or two difficulties of a different kind.
For President Rodriguez Lara’s State Dinner, the Causescus insisted that their children be seated above the members of the Ecuadorian Cabinet and the Diplomatic Corps. The beleaguered Chief of Protocol had to point out that such precedence would apply only to princes in direct line of heredity; the Causescus’ request would violate protocol of Ecuador, which was embodied in Ecuadorian law, and this could not be broken to accommodate the whims of the President of the Socialist Republic of Romania.
The locals then thought up a way to solve this little problem: they would invite President Rodriguez Lara’s eldest son and seat him with the Causescu offspring. But the Romanian Socialist children weren’t having any of this; they simply did not attend the banquet.
The hosts were distressed to find that each meal they tendered was delayed by Romanian agents creating havoc in the kitchens and by insisting on tasting all dishes to be placed before their President. Then at their return meal — the Romanians’ buffet dinner at the Intercontinental Quito — they insisted on mixing all the drinks. When the Mexican and Uruguayan Ambassadors sat down during cocktails for a chat, Romanian security guards ordered them to stand up: no one was to sit down except the Presidential party. The Japanese Ambassador, on arriving, went up directly to the bar rather than wait for a drink to be served him, and he was refused by the Romanian security-guard-bartender. The Ecuadorian guests and the diplomatic corps observed that the Romanian entourage, ie. the hosts, were served different – and better – food than they.
With some reluctance, the Ecuadorians agreed that President Causescu pay a visit to the Central University, make a speech and receive an honourary degree. They were taken aback not so much by the communist clichés in his speech as by its insulting and vitriolic tone, by his snide comments on Ecuador’s “revolution,” and by his scathing reference to Ecuador’s attitude to the Allende government in Chile.
One Ecuadorian Cabinet Minister said that he had never negotiated with such an ill-mannered group of foreigners; he found his Romanian opposite number so rude and insulting that he refused to attend the Romanian reception for the Ecuadorian President or the farewell ceremonies at the airport.
On returning to Bogota I learned that similar shenanigans had gone on during the Romanian visit there, and in Caracas too. The Latin Americans viewed these surprising events more in puzzlement than in anger, unable to comprehend how an allegedly enlightened Communist leader, with his reputation for having achieved a more flexible foreign policy than the U.S.S.R. permitted other states in its Eastern European orbit, could indulge in such high-handed, ham-fisted and totally arrogant behaviour — rendering quite counter-productive the State Visit for which he himself had pushed.
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Originally published in bout de papier, Vol. 5, No. 4 (1988) — Winter 1988 // Hiver 1988, pp. 16–17. Read the rest of this issue →
