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MISSIONS IMPOSSIBLE

Pariah state ambassadors
The Independent on Sunday, December 2002

WHEN The Sunday Review decided to interview the diplomatic representatives of Britain’s least favourite countries we thought, naively, it would be easy. By definition, these people spend their working lives trying to say things that nobody wants to hear, flailing at an irrepressible tide of public opinion and received wisdom with brooms threadbare but for a few ragged strands of denial and propaganda. Surely, we reckoned, the plenipotentiaries of pariah states (we didn’t say “pariah states” in our introductory fax, of course – in what we thought was a neat, and pleasingly ironic, appropriation of diplomatic language, we spoke of “nations whose relationship with Britain and the west is unusually complex and challenging”) would welcome a chance to put their case, to get across that the governments they work for weren’t as bad as they were painted. We were wrong.
  It started quite well. The embassy of Myanmar signalled its willingness to co-operate in less than 48 hours – an early indication of the startling charm we discovered when we called on them. Then it got difficult. The Iranians called back, sounding bemused. “Do you really think,” smirked a press office functionary, “that our relationship is, as you put it, complex and challenging?” Well, I said, what with the SAS blowing your windows in that time and you guys sentencing one of our greatest novelists to death, it has had its up and downs. It is, I guess, not impossible that this response and their eventual decision not to grant an interview had something to do with each other.
  Then it got really difficult. The Liberian embassy – that is to say, the emissaries to planet Earth of Liberia’s certifiable president, Charles Ghanky Taylor – lost the fax. So we re-sent it. They lost it again. So we sent it again. Then they denied they’d ever even received the first one, so I explained the idea over the telephone, after which they asked me to send a fax, which they later claimed to have lost; the rest of my life will be haunted by a vague fear of a phone ringing in a retirement home for bewildered hacks decades hence, and a lugubrious West African voice intoning “the ambassador will see you now”. The Libyan Peoples’ Bureau – where, interestingly, enquiries were directed to a woman with a terrifyingly posh English accent – didn’t want to know, despite my claim of acquaintance with Saif Gaddafi, favoured son of the Golden Leader, who I interviewed for this newspaper last year. Perhaps they just don’t see themselves as bad guys anymore.
  A source at the Foreign & Commonwealth Office gave me the mobile number of Mr Ri Si Hong, who will be Charge d’Affaires when North Korea opens its first ever diplomatic mission to the UK later this year (assuming, that is, that North Korea still exists later this year). Mr Hong and his fellow diplomats are currently renting a house in a London suburb while they search for official premises. He seemed a pleasant chap, but declined a formal interview. “We have many requests,” he said, “but I’ve only been here two months, so I’m not in a position to speak. Maybe in the future, when I’m accustomed to the situation.” Did he know when that might be? “I’m sorry, no. Good afternoon.”
  We did better with Iran and North Korea’s fellow founder members of the Axis of Evil. After weeks of being told that the head of Iraq’s Interests Section was out of the country, and that he wasn’t giving interviews anyway, they called out of the blue and asked if we’d still like to come and see them. At around the same time, the embassy of Sudan – who aren’t officially a pariah state, but were bombed by America as recently as 1998 and were once the landlords of Osama bin-Laden and Carlos the Jackal – offered us an appointment. We were, we thought, on a roll.
  Sadly, our surging optimism was dashed against the unbudgeable obstacle that is the High Commission of Zimbabwe. We rang, we emailed, we faxed, we wrote. We faxed them the telephone message, posted them the fax and emailed them the letter. Every so often, a tantalising reply would ask us to re-fax the letter or email the phone message again. I finally gave up when I started to believe that His Excellency Mr Simbarashe Simbanenduku Mumbengegwi – perhaps he was busy struggling with one of those machines that prints business cards – was roughly one more communication away from having a case for a restraining order.

Myanmar
Dr Kyaw Win, Ambassador
Dr Win, 65, is disarming proof that whatever else the military regime in Rangoon may be, they’re not stupid. They could have appointed some bland bureaucrat or a hatchet-faced colonel to be their point man in Britain. They chose an impish British-educated physician with a twinkling sense of humour – when I ask about his dealings with the British government, he replies “Your Foreign Secretary is so busy that no ambassadors have access to him. Maybe the American ambassador” – and an effervescent optimism which, all things considered, he must draw on frequently. The FCO cannot even bring itself to address Myanmar by its government’s preferred name, insisting that the country is called Burma (“Burma is the form preferred by the leaders of Burma’s democracy movement,” sniffs the FCO website, “[who were] the legitimate winners of the 1990 elections.”)
  “I was not put off by that,” smiles Dr Win, who has held the post since June 1999. “I find these situations challenging. All my life, as an emergency physician, I have faced challeging situations. We try to heal individuals under very difficult conditions. Similarly, now I look upon myself as continuing this healing process, not among patients, but among countries. That’s the job of a diplomat.”
  Among the wounds that Dr Win has had to tend have been the direct actions of British protestors James Maudsley and Rachel Goldwyn, both of whom were gaoled in Myanmar for protesting the ruling junta’s dreadful human rights record.
  “Challenging times, to say the least,” says Dr Win. “When young James Maudsley was arrested for the third time, when I came here, I kept myself informed of what his father wrote to my predecessor, under what conditions he was released the previous time, and what would be the conditions that I might be able to create to have this problem solved. With Rachel Goldwyn, it was easier because it was her first time. Her mother is a GP, and Dr Goldwyn and I have a direct working relationship that we established after her daughter got into that particular predicament.”
  Do you ever meet people socially who, when they find out what you do, give you an earful about human rights, or about your government’s treatment of (Myanmar’s sainted opposition leader, and Nobel peace laureate) Aung San Suu Kyi?
  “No. The kind of people I meet are very polished people.”
  And personally, does what you know about the people you work for ever cost you any sleep?
  “I serve my government,” he smiles, “just like my late father served the British government in Burma – he was District Judge of Rangoon. He had to arrest prime minister U Nu, for example. He was serving a government. I do whatever I can for whoever is in my reach. As a physician, I have learned to live with the dictum that you cure only sometimes, you relieve often, but you must comfort always.”

Sudan
Dr Hasan Abdin, Ambassador
Sudan’s relationship with the west is complex, challenging, and somewhat curious, in that pretty much everything that can be said about Iraq can be said about Sudan, but nobody is proposing to bomb the place. Sudan is an oil-rich Arab nation run by an Islamic dictator, General Omar Bashir, whose human rights record does not stand much scrutiny, especially from the perspective of the Christian population of Sudan’s south, where an interminable civil war has killed and displaced millions. There are also connections to terrorism both undisputed (the tenancies in Khartoum of bin-Laden and Carlos – though, in fairness, the former was deported and the latter extradited) and rumoured (camps operated by Hizbollah and Hamas, among others).
  Since Sudan became independent of its British and Egyptian colonial rulers in 1956, its embassy has been a splendid building directly opposite St James’ Palace. The current incumbent, 61-year-old Dr Abdin, is a Professor of African History who joined his country’s diplomatic service in 1990, and has been Sudan’s ambassador to Nigeria, Iraq and, since 2000, Britain. Dr Abdin deals with Britain’s 20,000-strong Sudanese community and, he admits, pressure from human rights lobbyists. These groups have just scored a victory in their campaign to persuade foreign oil corporations to leave Sudan: the Canadian company Talisman, tiring of pressure from harassed shareholders, is selling up.
  “This has been a problem,” says Dr Abdin. “The fierce campaign to dislodge these companies was based on misconceptions. This idea that people were being chased out their areas so that companies could dig for oil is nonsense. On the contrary, Talisman produced aerial photographs showing that more people came to these areas after oil was discovered – with oil came social services, like wells, schools, roads.”
  This is disputed by the rebels, and by many NGOs, who claim that infrastructure built by the oil companies has mostly benefited the Sudanese military. The British government has been involved in efforts to secure peace in Sudan, including, in March 2002, hosting Dr John Garang, leader of the Sudan Peoples’ Liberation Movement rebels fighting for a separate state in the south.
  “I did not meet him,” says Dr Abdin, “but I can say that my government who encouraged this visit – contrary to formal policy, because before that we objected strongly to the British government receiving Mr Garang. In 2000, just after I presented my credentials, I met with the then Foreign Secretary, Mr Robin Cook, and told him we would like him to use his good offices to persuade Mr Garang to accept a ceasefire as a prelude to negotiations.”
  Like a bewildering number of the world’s dissident organisations, the SPLM maintain an office in London. I wondered if Dr Abdin ever bumps into them at receptions and, if so, what they say to each other.
  “Sometimes,” says Dr Abdin, “we might see them at Westminster if they go there to make a case. But the interesting thing about the Sudanese is that we maintain very cordial relations on the social level, in spite of the differences, and I think this is helping the negotiations. After negotiations in Abuja a few years ago, one SPLM leader gave the leader of the northern delegation some money to take back to his sister in Khartoum.”

Iraq
Dr Mudhafar Amin, Head of Interests Section
As we walk into Dr Amin’s office, dominated by what must be the largest portrait of Saddam Hussein in this country, he offers us chocolates. Photographer Jean-Phillipe is initially reluctant, but eventually accepts.
  “Oh, go on,” he tells Dr Amin. “You’ve twisted my arm.”
  “No, no,” replies Dr Amin. “I wouldn’t do that. This is not a dictatorship!”
  Dr Amin, 59, is the last relic of what was once a substantial diplomatic mission, and is now, officially, a sub-branch of the Embassy of Jordan (Iraq and Britain have no formal diplomatic relationship). The Iraqi government owns numbers 20, 21 and 22 Queen’s Gate in London – magnificent white terraces that once, before Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait in 1990, housed the embassy, the cultural bureau, a military attache and 120 staff. Now, there is just Dr Amin, an assistant and three part-timers on one floor of number 21. Downstairs, the metal detectors by the entrance are rusting; upstairs, the paint is peeling and the plaster is flaking. Dr Amin has worked in this melancholy place for four years, following assignments to Brussels, Berlin and New York. Earlier in life, he was a Professor of History; his PhD is from the University of Durham.
  “War is ugly,” he says, raising the inevitable. “It has to be the last resort. Anybody official could come and discuss with me, or with the Iraqi government, a means to arrive at an acceptable situation. I don’t see why you would beat me up while we are just sitting and talking.”
  Dr Amin claims to receive many calls from ordinary British citizens confirming their objections to their military invading his country. He says that the US is being pushed into it by pro-Israel tendencies in the American establishment. I ask if he doesn’t think it might have something to do with the – well, let’s face it – fairly awful man he works for.
  “Look,” he says, “definitely there is room for improvement. But does that improvement come from war, or from encouragement, from dialogue, from lifting the sanctions and letting people live normal lives? That’s when people will demand more freedoms, more human rights. I wish we had a democratic, open society like anywhere else in the civilised world. But why single out Iraq? Just because Iraq is different politically, you wage a war against it while you deal with countries that have worse records than even Iraq?”
  Perhaps Dr Amin is just past caring, but this seems remarkably, indeed refreshingly, undiplomatic language.
  “I would not work for a new government installed by a foreign power, no. Whether I like my government or not, it is an Iraqi government. If it’s installed, like Hamid Karzai in Afghanistan, no sir. No way. You can have my resignation now.”
  Dr Amin seemed a decent, funny and independent-minded man. I wondered if he was – as I know, having been to his country, many Iraqis are – scared of the man in the picture behind his desk.
  “No, I’m not,” he snorted. “Why should I be? Who is putting pressure on me? I’ve lived all my life in the west, I have a PhD, I could get a job anywhere, but I like to serve my country. If I was scared, I’d quit.”

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