Diplomacy's Dark Hours

Seldom have envoys and embassies faced so many hazards--and catcalls

"My slowly creeping doubt is that we may be contemplating the beginning of the end of diplomacy--not as an art, which we will always need, but as an institution."

So warned Italy's Roberto Ducci last month, retiring as Rome's Ambassador to London after 42 years in his country's foreign service. Indeed, seldom before in modern history has diplomacy been so dangerous, or so seemingly discredited, a calling. The clear and ugly danger is represented by terrorists who look on embassies and diplomatic missions as ripe, highly visible targets of opportunity, and their occupants as valuable hostages. At the same time, the traditional role of the diplomat, as an international negotiator, has been to some degree rendered obsolete in an age of Instant communications, when heads of state and foreign ministers personally conduct essential business, sometimes without consulting their appointed envoys. American embassies, symbols of "imperialism," are special targets of leftist zealots. And these days American diplomacy itself is the target of much criticism by both allies and enemies--criticism inspired by what too often seems to be insufficiently considered policies announced by President Carter and his aides.

Last week the turmoil besetting the diplomatic scene reverberated dramatically on three fronts:

> In Tehran, an apparent move toward the possible release of the hostages held by militants at the U.S. embassy came just as a special U.N. commission was ready to give up in abject failure. The militants, who have occupied the embassy for more than four months, prepared to turn over their 50 prisoners to Iran's ruling Revolutionary Council, but at week's end were still arguing with Iranian government officials as to when the transfer might actually take place.

> In Bogota, walk-on-eggs negotiations between the Colombian government and leftist guerrillas holding diplomatic hostages at the embassy of the Dominican Republic produced the release last week of another prisoner. Several other envoys were among the hostages still being held at gun point inside the building.

> In Washington, Secretary of State Cyrus Vance took full public responsibility for a "mistaken" U.S. vote in favor of a U.N. Security Council resolution calling upon Israel to dismantle all of its settlements in the occupied territories. This astonishing policy turnabout managed to antagonize both Israelis and Arabs, raised new doubts among America's allies about the credibility of Carter's foreign policy, and contributed to the already shaky morale of the U.S. Foreign Service. U.S. diplomacy had seldom seen darker hours.

As a diplomatic theater of the absurd, nothing could quite compare with the continuing siege in Colombia. The stage was the broad Avenida de Carrera in central Bogota, cordoned off around the three-story embassy of the Dominican Republic; the handmade red-white-and-blue flag flying outside the building was that of a Colombian revolutionary group called M-19, for April 19 Movement. More than a dozen of their masked and armed guerrillas, including at least four women, remained in full control of the compound they seized almost two weeks ago in a gunfight during an Independence Day reception given by the Dominican Ambassador. They had a bonanza of prisoners: more than a score of diplomats from 18 countries, including the papal nuncio; Washington's respected Spanish-born envoy, Diego Asencio, 48, and 13 other ambassadors.

Negotiations between the Colombians and the guerrillas were carried on inside a cream-colored van parked in front of the embassy's main gate. Last week two officials of the Colombian Foreign Ministry met inside the truck with one of the guerrilla women, who was wearing a jogging jacket, jeans and a woolen mask over her face. She was accompanied by Mexican Ambassador Ricardo Galan, representing the prisoners. All three men, with Latin chivalry, gallantly stood aside to allow the hooded woman to enter first. After two hours and 20 minutes of secret talks, there were signs of some progress. Austrian Ambassador Edgar Selzer was released and flew off to Vienna to be at the bedside of his dying wife.

The government steadfastly resisted the guerrillas' original demands, for $50 million and the release of 311 political prisoners. But it was said to have put forward a proposal offering the terrorists safe passage out of the country and an aircraft to fly them to Austria, Panama or Switzerland. Also included in the government's package, according to some reports, was the proposal that Pope John Paul II be asked to enter into the negotiations, presumably through an emissary. The terrorists' hooded negotiator was said to have shown some flexibility about the guerrillas' demand for the $50 million, but very little in regard to the prisoners.

Inside the embassy the guerrillas were treating their captives with courtesy and consideration. The Costa Rican Ambassador, who was released shortly after the takeover, described the terrorists as "a group of highly educated intellectuals" who displayed "incredible discipline" in responding to their masked chieftain, "Commandante Numero Uno."

Each day the Colombian Red Cross showed up to deliver food and, ever so tidily, take away the garbage. Inside, life went on as "in a hotel," according to a Colombian government official. The Haitian Ambassador telephoned his girlfriend back in Port-au-Prince. The Egyptian Ambassador ordered, and received, kibbi, his favorite dish, in addition to the Koran. The papal nuncio, Monsignor Angelo Acerbi, celebrated Mass twice a day, using sacramental wine and a crucifix that the terrorists had allowed the Red Cross to deliver.

Even so, the atmosphere remained quite tense; no one had forgotten that one of the embassy invaders had been killed in the vicious original Shootout. After gaining his freedom, Austria's Selzer warned that his colleagues were in "an extremely dangerous situation." At week's end the panel-truck negotiations continued, but the siege appeared to be settling in for a prolonged terrorist live-in.

Diplomats everywhere were all too aware that the Bogota drama was only the latest in a long string of recent embassy seizures around the world. So far this year in Latin America alone, terrorists have stormed--and subsequently vacated, in one way or another--eight embassies, in El Salvador, Guatemala, Panama, Mexico and Peru. In El Salvador alone, six embassies have been raided in the past ten months--and six others have closed down because of the high risk. Last month leftist guerrillas invaded the Spanish embassy in San Salvador and, systematically for ten days, traded hostages for freed political prisoners.

The U.S., as a pet target of leftist discontent, has been disproportionately victimized, even aside from Tehran. The State Department lists 254 significant terrorist attacks against U.S. diplomatic installations or individuals in the past decade. Five U.S. ambassadors have been killed in the past eleven years: the most recent was Ambassador to Afghanistan Adolph Dubs, who died a year ago when Soviet-advised Afghan police stormed the hotel room where he was being held captive by Muslim rebels. The most endangered envoys of all, however, are the Turks. Since 1973 ten Turkish diplomats or members of their families have been assassinated, despite some of the most elaborate security precautions of any diplomatic corps in the West. The killings have been claimed by Armenian separatists; many Turkish officials suspect that the real villains are Greek Cypriot terrorists.

Terror on embassy row is taking its toll on the morale of many career diplomats. "This has really become a very, very dangerous profession," says former U.S. Under Secretary of State Joseph Sisco. "Working for the foreign service is as hazardous as being a policeman," says a functionary at the Quai d'Orsay in Paris. "Why is it that everybody is outraged when a gendarme is killed, but hardly anybody notices when an embassy employee is shot in Madagascar?"

More to the point, why are embassies and diplomats such popular terrorist targets? One root cause, many Western diplomats believe, is that a number of postcolonial, Third World countries are far less inclined than tradition-minded Western states to abide by the old rules of discourse among nations. The fact is, modern diplomacy is a Western invention, developed piecemeal by the duchies and principalities of 15th and 16th century Europe. Western diplomats, at least, would not know how to operate without two of its principal canons: the "immunity" of foreign diplomats from local laws and regulations, and the "inviolability" of embassy ground. Inviolable sanctuary has been upheld even in hours of international conflict. In the aftermath of the Hungarian Revolution, for example, Jozsef Cardinal Mindszenty sought and received the safety of the U.S. legation in Budapest for 15 years. These principles are spelled out in the Vienna Convention of 1961, which has been ratified by 131 nations--including Iran.

By traditional standards of diplomacy, the seizure of the American embassy in Tehran represented a particularly abhorrent violation of these two moorings of diplomatic practice. But it was not unique. When mobs sacked the U.S. embassy in Tripoli last year, Washington strongly accused Libyan authorities of allowing it. "Civilized countries have no possibility of retaliation, because to arrest the envoy of an offending power in return is alien to our concepts," Italian Diplomat Ducci complains. "Why do we then continue to offer hostages to imams and to fortune?" Enrico Jacchia, a noted Italian political scientist, is somewhat more philosophical: "We assumed that the Western principle of diplomatic immunity could be applied everywhere in the Third World. In other words we wanted to export our way of life--and it didn't work."

Another reason that diplomats and embassies are increasingly frequent targets of violence is that the attacks often succeed. Embassy invasion is fast becoming in the '80s what skyjacking was in the '70s. Says Brian Jenkins, the Rand Corp.'s specialist on terrorism: "The generally harder line toward other forms of international terrorism has not applied to the taking over of diplomatic missions. There is mounting evidence that terrorists may have shifted to diplomatic missions, where they are less likely to face assault."

There is little agreement about what the priorities should be in trying to combat the threat. Many experts argue for a coordinated international strategy, including new antiterrorist laws comparable to those against skyjacking. Agreement has been elusive. As a former U.S. ambassador complains, "One man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter."

Another problem is that diplomatic outposts cannot be turned into minimilitary bases. Many U.S. officials contend that the Tehran crisis was unavoidable, once the Iranian police allowed it to happen, because no reasonable number of Marines could have stopped it. Said one U.S. security official: "If you cannot rely on the host government for protection, you will have to post a Marine division around every embassy." Consequently, the prevailing response to embassy terrorism is the "barricade" approach.

Entering the U.S. embassy in Kabul, for example, a visitor is scrutinized at a dozen different fallback layers of security. First he has to sign in, have his passport checked and business verified at a gatehouse. Searchlights sometimes follow him across the courtyard, closed-circuit TV cameras beam his image to half a dozen screens inside. Behind the electronically controlled door, credentials are checked again, cameras and tape recorders yielded. An electronic detection booth checks further for hidden weapons; Marines stand ready to frisk thoroughly. Finally, when a member of the embassy staff emerges to provide a personal escort, the thoroughly inhibited visitor is allowed to penetrate into the inner sanctum.

The trend for the future, according to State Department Security Planner Lambert Heyniger, will be to design "smaller, less conspicuous buildings, possibly raised off the ground to make them that much more difficult for attackers to enter." Many new embassies have already traded aesthetics for security considerations. The new Swedish embassy in Cairo is a forbidding concrete structure with a single street entrance, narrow slits for windows, and a protected inner courtyard backing on the Nile--for quick escape by boat if necessary. More than anything, it is said to resemble Hitler's bunker. Finally, another comparatively hardhearted approach gaining adherents even in the U.S. State Department is simply to be tougher in striking back next time--as the Soviets would probably be. "Tehran would never happen to the Soviets," says U.S. Antiterrorism Expert Robert Kupperman. "If it did, they would wipe out a hunk of the city, even if they lost everybody in their embassy. That has its deterrent effect."

Considering the increased peril that their lives are in, diplomats hardly enjoy hearing that their embassies and their duties are not as important as they once were. But a growing number of critics believe that many of the traditional forms and norms of diplomacy--and the role of the ambassador--are already not only out of date but possibly obsolescent. Italy's Ducci goes so far as to raise the possibility of abolishing permanent missions and replacing them with special roving legates, not unlike those of the 16th century. "An exchange of embassies between friendly countries is at worst superfluous," he argues, "and between unfriendly countries it is at best risky."

Few deny that summitry and shuttle diplomacy have pretty much ended the traditional role of the ambassador as a decision maker and formulator of policy. "Not such a long time ago, instructions came by couriers on horseback or by ship," says a West German diplomat. "Now," says a Bonn Chancellery colleague, "if Schmidt wants to talk to Giscard, he picks up the phone."

Many diplomats complain of lost "elbow room" and of having been transformed into an "executive manager" at best, and, to quote one former French ambassador, a combination "messenger boy, travel agent and innkeeper." Reduced responsibility has also meant falling prestige. No French diplomat reacted kindly when President Georges Pompidou imperiously commented that an ambassador's role consisted of balancing "a cup of tea and a slice of cake." Nonetheless, after each election in the U.S., hope still springs eternal among political beneficiaries that they might be rewarded with choice ambassadorial appointments.

Henry Kissinger believes an ambassador's role has been diminished in certain very precise ways. Says he: "On day-to-day negotiations, professional ambassadors are less necessary than they were in the last century, when distances were greater and instructions could not be issued in each instance. Today there is a trend to instruct them in minute detail in even insignificant tactical decisions." On the other hand, he also pays diplomats the haughty compliment of arguing that it is up to them to take up some of the cerebral slack left by politicians. "Before World War I," he says, "world leaders were of the same intellectual milieu. Today the qualities necessary to become a national leader are not necessarily the same as those needed to be a national leader. So diplomats are unusually important."

U.S. Ambassador to London Kingman Brewster believes that envoys in this era could actually be more rather than less useful, mostly because they can pro vide "real perspective" and "not just the flash-flash, bang-bang, instant short focus on every dramatic event." Although Brewster favors selective summitry, he argues that only diplomats on the scene can provide the "accurate perceptions" and "nuance and detail" that are essential to the summit participants.

One problem that bothers American career diplomats is what they call "back channeling"--that is, top officials circumventing ambassadors in ways that undercut their relationship with the capitals to which they have been appointed. A classic case in point: key negotiations with the U.S.S.R. in the Nixon, Ford and Carter Administrations have usually been carried out by Secretaries of State directly with longtime Soviet Ambassador Anatoli Dobrynin. Former Ambassador to Moscow Malcolm Toon, a career diplomat for 33 years, thinks this exclusive use of the "Washington channel" is all wrong. Says Toon: "As I told Vance a couple of times, if Washington continues to behave the way it did in terms of using the American embassy in Moscow, they could just as well get along without an ambassador." Joe Sisco, who was twice offered the Moscow post by Richard Nixon, concurs. He says, "I turned that embassy down for the following reason: as long as Nixon and Kissinger were around, they were going to be the Soviet desk officers. And if I decided to go to Moscow, Nixon would have a personnel problem within six weeks."

These days, however, considerations of the diplomat's professional frustration and his changing job description tend to pale beside the crucial and complex questions posed by the terrorist threat. The underlying quandary, of course, is the question of diplomacy's sheer survival, of how long it can continue to function at all with its embassies under constant siege and its practitioners under constant threat. Rand's Jenkins points out that, with the glaring exception of Tehran, the terrorists have shrewdly concentrated on "soft" embassy targets belonging to smaller countries and avoided the fortresses belonging to larger ones. That might appear to be an argument for ever more stringent and restrictive security measures. But how can an American ambassador even begin to do his job if he never leaves his bunker?

The dilemma posed by such embassy takeovers is a grim classic: to reject the terrorist demands outright could result in the death of the hostages on the spot, but to accede to them might only encourage terrorism elsewhere. At week's end a rumor was circulating that the Colombian government would fly the entire embassy throng--hostages, guerrillas and possibly a number of freed political prisoners--to Panama City. There, on neutral ground, the guerrillas would release their captives and make their separate ways to prearranged countries of asylum. And what if no negotiated solution could be reached? The answer, at least from the Austrian Ambassador who had been released as a hostage, was stark: "Catastrophic massacre."

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