US embassy cable - 05PRAGUE213

UNCLAS SECTION 01 OF 02 PRAGUE 000213 
 
SIPDIS 
 
SENSITIVE 
 
E.O. 12958: N/A 
TAGS: PREL, PINR, EZ, EUN 
SUBJECT: NEW EC DEPUTY DIRECTOR GENERAL FOR EXTERNAL 
RELATIONS, KAREL KOVANDA 
 
 
 1. (U)  Post offers the following background and 
biographical information on Karel Kovanda, the current Czech 
Ambassador at NATO, who was appointed February 9 as European 
Commission Deputy Director General for External Relations. 
Kovanda will replace Fernando Velenzuela Marzo.  His 
portfolio will include, inter alia, North American Affairs. 
 
2. (U) Kovanda (61) does not have strong ties to the Czech 
Republic. He is not burdened by the strong sense of 
nationalism that is found on both sides of the political 
spectrum wwithin the Czech Republic. He was born in London 
during WWII, and has spent most of the last 25 years outside 
the Czech Republic.  Kovanda was active in the Czechoslovak 
student dissident movement in the late sixties. He was 
president of the National Student Union when that 
organization was banned in 1969.  He fled to the US the 
following year.  America became his adopted homeland.  He 
took an MBA from Pepperdine University and a PhD in Political 
Science from MIT.  He taught political science at a 
university in California. 
 
3. (U) Kovanda has also lived in China.  He worked as a 
consultant for Radio Beijing from 1977-1979. 
 
4. (U) Kovanda returned from America to the Czech Republic in 
1991 and joined the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in April of 
that year.  Two years later, in June 1993, he was sent back 
to the US to become the Czech Permanent Representative at the 
UN.  He held that position until February of 1997.  During 
that time, the Czech Republic was one of the ten 
non-permanent members of the UN Security Council.  Kovanda 
served as President of the Security Council twice, in January 
1994, and again in April of 1995 during the early days of the 
massacres in Rwanda. 
 
5. (U) In the fall of 1997, several months after leaving his 
post at the UN, he became head of the Czech delegation in 
Brussels that negotiated NATO accession. In the spring of 
1998, the MFA sent him back to Brussels to serve as the Czech 
Ambassador to NATO and the WEU; he is presently the longest 
serving ambassador at NATO.  One acquaintance predicted that 
Kovanda, who is 61 as he starts his new position with the 
European Commission, would finish his career in Brussels. 
 
6. (U) Kovanda got into hot water in April, 1999 when, as the 
Czech Ambassador to NATO, he criticized members of his own 
government for not supporting the NATO air strikes in 
Yugoslavia.  Current President Vaclav Klaus was then head of 
the Chamber of Deputies, the main legislative body, and 
voiced strong reservations about the NATO actions.  Kovanda's 
statements led to charges that he was disloyal and even to 
calls for his dismissal. 
 
7. (U) In light of the years Kovanda spent in the US, it is 
not surprising that his views towards America are fairly 
sympathetic.  A speech Kovanda gave in Paris in December of 
2003 gives a good exposition of his views on the US and its 
transatlantic role (full text at 
www.cicerofoundation.org/lectures/kovanda dec03.html). In the 
speech, Kovanda defends the US invasion of Iraq.  He said the 
Czechs supported the US "because of our belief that it stood 
on the right side of the issue; because of our belief that 
the Saddam regime was so awful that if someone was ready to 
take it out, we, with our own historical experiences with 
totalitarian dictatorships, could not be against it" 
 
8. (U) In the same speech, Kovanda defended the American 
idealism that some Europeans find naive: "We detect a strand 
of idealism in US foreign policy which appeals to us; for 
better or worse, President Masaryk's country - our own - was 
founded on the strength of Wilsonian idealism, back in 1918. 
It is an idealism dedicated to freedom and democracy; an 
idealism that might be a little less tempered by pragmatic, 
say economic concerns that, we fear, motivate from time to 
time foreign policies of some European powers." 
 
9. (SBU) At a NATO event in Colorado Springs in 2003, Kovanda 
showed his own idealism when he refused to have anything to 
do with the Russian delegation.  He left the facility for a 
walk in the hills in order to avoid meeting the Russians. 
 
10.  (SBU)  Although he is generally favorably inclined to US 
positions, at least on transatlantic issues, Americans who 
have worked with Kovanda have found him a difficult 
individual at times. he can be engaging when he chooses to 
be. Professorial and prima donna were two of the descriptions 
used by acquaintances. 
 
11.(U) Kovanda is eloquent in English, fluent in French and 
Spanish, and functional in Russian and German.  Languages are 
one of his hobbies.  His second wife, Noemi, is a native 
Slovak. 
CABANISS