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[00:00:27] then professionalism helps
[00:00:31] Ladies and gentlemen, welcome. You are watching Diplomatic World.
[00:00:34] In the next 30 minutes, we will go behind
[00:00:37] the scenes of negotiations and agreements that could rewrite
[00:00:41] European history in the next 50 years. Egypt is an
[00:00:44] important partner of Romania, as it is a gateway to
[00:00:49] appearances, minor details from Africa, but also to the Middle East, and our country
[00:00:51] maintains historical relations with Egypt. However, there is also
[00:00:55] a commercial stake involved. Just last year, Romanian
[00:00:59] companies sold... in Egypt wheat worth
[00:01:02] 177 million euros, but
[00:01:05] trade can go to the next level,
[00:01:09] believe Romanian diplomats. More details about this relationship and
[00:01:12] how trade can be improved between
[00:01:15] Romania and Egypt, and what are the strategic stakes of
[00:01:19] this diplomatic relationship, you will find in an exclusive interview
[00:01:23] with the Ambassador of Romania in
[00:01:25] Egypt.
[00:01:29] Madam Ambassador, welcome to Diplomatic World, I greet
[00:01:33] you. We are glad you are with us. What does this role mean
[00:01:37] that you have taken on for more than three years? You are the Ambassador of Romania in
[00:01:40] Egypt, a country where Romania has important stakes. Good day,
[00:01:44] Mr. Ungaș, thank you for the invitation. What does it mean to
[00:01:47] be an ambassador and especially the ambassador
[00:01:51] of Romania in Egypt? It's a big professional challenge,
[00:01:54] expressed in contemporary language. But it's a
[00:01:58] challenge I've known.
[00:02:00] I've fully realized it even before I left,
[00:02:04] it's a post I've wanted. Of course, on the ground it feels
[00:02:07] different. This theoretical challenge is one thing when you theorize
[00:02:11] and another when you are in the practice there, but it is an
[00:02:14] overwhelming post, I often characterize it
[00:02:18] in a good sense, meaning it requires a professional, a
[00:02:22] diplomat, everything he has ever learned, all
[00:02:25] the skills he is capable of and of course, all the passion and
[00:02:29] dedication. You are the first woman sent by
[00:02:32] Romania in the role of ambassador in Egypt.
[00:02:35] Yes, and honestly, I thank for the
[00:02:38] trust at that time, both the former President of
[00:02:41] Romania, Mr. Iohannis, and the former Minister
[00:02:44] Bogdan Aurescu, who had no hesitation
[00:02:48] knowing me and working for a long time with them and knowing my
[00:02:51] Sibiu, but sometimes I also felt hesitation, even in Romanian
[00:02:54] society, I must tell you, however, to my great pleasure
[00:02:58] and surprise, I thought that this might be a slightly
[00:03:02] sensitive aspect, we in Romania and perhaps even in Europe. Sometimes
[00:03:05] we tend to judge certain societies in the
[00:03:08] East a little too superficially. Well, Egypt
[00:03:12] is a very advanced, very open,
[00:03:15] very cosmopolitan country, with a very visionary
[00:03:19] and strategic leadership that tries to lead the country on the path
[00:03:22] of modernity, of course, at a pace that society can sustain,
[00:03:27] some people, fellow citizens or not, not through radical measures, and to my great surprise,
[00:03:29] there are not. There are many female ambassadors in Cairo, we are a group of
[00:03:33] 18, we are very supportive of each other from 140
[00:03:36] missions, but we have all the support and
[00:03:40] a very good reception in Egyptian society, and I
[00:03:44] cannot complain from where I thought that perhaps this would be a sensitive aspect to
[00:03:47] overcome, it turns out that there, from the president to
[00:03:51] the government, parliamentarians, everyone encourages the empowerment
[00:03:55] of women, their entry into politics, into the economy,
[00:03:58] equality of rights. I must admit that being one of the
[00:04:02] 18 ambassadors plus of Romania makes me very easy to remember,
[00:04:05] which helps me a lot in Cairo. Egypt is simultaneously
[00:04:09] a gateway to Africa and the Middle East, with
[00:04:12] access to the Mediterranean Sea and to the Red Sea. What does
[00:04:16] it mean for Romania and what are Romania's stakes there? Indeed, it is a
[00:04:20] country, we always say, of particular strategic importance,
[00:04:24] but there this reality is felt every day and at every
[00:04:28] kilometer of the border. Practically. It has the Red Sea to the east and
[00:04:31] owns the Suez Canal, which makes it one of the most important
[00:04:35] states on the global map of connectivity, perhaps you remember
[00:04:39] a few years ago a large
[00:04:42] container ship ran aground in the Suez Canal for five or six
[00:04:45] days and the prices of everything from mobile phones to cars and other
[00:04:49] important things from the east
[00:04:53] exploded, practically they freed it from they
[00:04:56] flowed the canal after five or six days. And then the Suez Canal saw that
[00:05:00] 12% of world trade belongs to Egypt. What interests does
[00:05:03] Romania have in Egypt? Why is it a stake for us? So, regarding
[00:05:07] this strategic importance, it has the Red Sea,
[00:05:11] the Suez Canal, it has Sinai, through which it
[00:05:13] is part of the dynamics and balance in the Middle East,
[00:05:17] including this balance now full
[00:05:20] of tensions, a balance that is actually being sought, it is a
[00:05:23] Mediterranean state and considers
[00:05:25] itself a Mediterranean nation and also an African state, so
[00:05:29] located in a place on the map that makes it very relevant and
[00:05:33] very interesting for Romania, on the one hand for
[00:05:36] commercial flows, for connectivity, everything that comes to
[00:05:39] Europe from Asia, on the other hand. for peace in the Middle
[00:05:43] East, which cannot be found without the contribution, without the support
[00:05:47] of Egypt, why do you say that it cannot be without the support of Egypt? Egypt
[00:05:50] is a great regional power, on a regional
[00:05:54] scale or as we sometimes call them emerging powers, it is one of
[00:05:57] the most important states on the African continent and likewise
[00:06:01] from the Middle East, there are no peace formulas, there are no
[00:06:05] negotiation processes, there are no multilateral proposals,
[00:06:09] there are no important developments either in the Middle East or in Africa
[00:06:13] that Egypt is not part of, and in fact not only is it part of, but it
[00:06:17] proposes, initiates, mediates. It is
[00:06:20] a country that matters a lot in foreign policy at a
[00:06:23] global level and for us in Cairo, which is quite a
[00:06:27] challenge in everyday life, it is very difficult to inform sometimes
[00:06:31] the central office, so Bucharest, the institution in Bucharest about everything that happens, because
[00:06:34] I'll give you an example, there is not a day in Cairo that you don't have at least two foreign
[00:06:38] ministers visiting, one in one part of the day, one in the other
[00:06:42] part. of the day, so practically, of course, our duty requires
[00:06:45] us to inform at every visit, but there we are talking about
[00:06:48] two or three a day at the presidential level at least one a week,
[00:06:52] because they are at the center of resolving, hopefully
[00:06:54] the conflict between Israel and
[00:06:58] Palestine, between Iran, Israel and the US,
[00:07:01] depending on how we want to describe it now, for Sudan, for Libya they are
[00:07:05] a key country, also for the Horn of Africa, which is the entrance,
[00:07:09] it's the Red Sea, the Bab-el-Mandeb Strait and practically the entrance to the
[00:07:12] Suez Canal, a country without which you cannot find
[00:07:16] stability and therefore neither prosperity, security in
[00:07:19] Africa, and in the Middle East, and the stability
[00:07:23] and prosperity of these areas are very important for
[00:07:26] Romania too, among other things, one because they reverberate, there are interconnections with
[00:07:30] the security of the Black Sea and our own conflict here at the border, but
[00:07:34] also because they are countries where we export, if they do not
[00:07:37] develop or are not stable, they do not have
[00:07:39] reasonable incomes, they cannot
[00:07:43] buy products from us, we still have important
[00:07:46] exports in the Middle East and in North Africa. What does
[00:07:49] Romania export to Egypt, Madam Ambassador, and what do
[00:07:53] commercial exchanges look like in the last year, where do you see more
[00:07:56] potential? Oh, there are three questions in one,
[00:08:00] but they are very important because much more can be done in the economy.
[00:08:03] I have already stated several times for the Egyptian Press, trying
[00:08:07] to boost the two business environments, that I would
[00:08:11] like us to reach two billion in the medium term, so in a few
[00:08:14] years, currently in 2024 it was not a
[00:08:17] great year, we were at 1.2
[00:08:21] billion, let's understand, this is the scale. Egypt
[00:08:25] has been from one year to another, it is either the first commercial partner of Romania in Africa,
[00:08:29] in all of Africa, or the second. So, this
[00:08:32] thing depended from one to another, we have maintained ourselves in second place in the last two years,
[00:08:36] but we are, last year we concluded at around
[00:08:39] 1.2 billion in bilateral trade volume. with a
[00:08:43] slight surplus for Romania last year. Romania's exports in
[00:08:47] the first four months of the year have increased by
[00:08:49] 50%. But we export a lot of
[00:08:53] cereals. We are here it is good for
[00:08:56] companies, for example from the agricultural sector in Romania, to
[00:09:00] know the reality. Egypt is the largest importer of cereals
[00:09:04] in the world. They need 20, 20-something million
[00:09:07] tons of cereals per year, they produce
[00:09:10] 10 million of wheat, for example, just to talk about this
[00:09:14] bread that the government guarantees to every poor
[00:09:16] family, at a basic price, they produce 10 million, so
[00:09:20] they need 10, 12 million of wheat annually, and
[00:09:24] statistics in recent years show Russia in first place, it's the
[00:09:27] geopolitics of cereals, I would call it, Russia in first place, but with
[00:09:31] a decreasing percentage, Ukraine in second place, with an increasing
[00:09:35] percentage, and Romania maintains itself as the third
[00:09:38] supplier of wheat to Egypt, which gives a part of the
[00:09:41] strategic character, I would even say, of our
[00:09:45] bilateral relationship, because we supply
[00:09:48] the Egyptian government, the Egyptian authorities, Egyptian
[00:09:51] companies, the wheat necessary to ensure
[00:09:54] food security, just as perhaps in Romania, most
[00:09:58] cities consume a lot of bread and many potatoes, I know
[00:10:01] my own habits and what I see in our
[00:10:05] country, there bread is the basic food product and
[00:10:08] the government guarantees at a minimum price a certain kind
[00:10:12] of peasant bread, it's a kind of flatbread, extraordinarily good tasting,
[00:10:16] I like it very much and whenever I taste it, especially when it's artisan product, I
[00:10:20] think, maybe it's Romanian wheat in it, so we have somewhere between 10
[00:10:24] and 15% of the wheat market and we are a strategic
[00:10:27] supplier, but we also export
[00:10:30] chemical products, we also
[00:10:34] export energy products, industrial equipment and
[00:10:36] machinery, wood
[00:10:39] as well, various other types, but this
[00:10:43] area of cereals remains decisive and
[00:10:45] gives, it somehow gives our weight and importance
[00:10:49] for them, for the social stability of the country, however
[00:10:53] it is a country with economic challenges in recent years. How does
[00:10:56] Romania, as a member country of the European Union, position itself in this
[00:11:00] relationship between the European Union and Egypt? How do you see our role and
[00:11:04] how do you see it from Cairo? This European dimension of our
[00:11:07] foreign policy in EU relations with third parties has always
[00:11:11] been very present and I have always been lucky, but I have also built this
[00:11:15] luck from both sides, of a very good relationship with our ambassadors
[00:11:18] to the EU, because it is necessary and not only with the ambassadors, but also with
[00:11:22] those colleagues who deal with these regions. So. I know very well the colleagues who
[00:11:26] manage Egypt from Brussels, we
[00:11:29] write to each other, we exchange evaluations. Egypt and the European
[00:11:32] Union are in a golden moment of their bilateral
[00:11:36] relationship, the European Union and Egypt are opening. Why do you say
[00:11:40] that? Because two years ago, yes,
[00:11:42] two years ago it signed the first strategic
[00:11:46] and comprehensive partnership, as it is called, that
[00:11:49] the European Union has with a country, with a third actor. It's the first
[00:11:53] of this type. Within this relationship, we have been
[00:11:57] a great supporter of Egypt, I'll give you just one example
[00:12:00] when the multi-annual financial support for Egypt was voted
[00:12:03] in the European Parliament, there were also critical voices for certain
[00:12:07] reasons, but in our case, the great majority of Romanian MEPs
[00:12:11] voted favorably and with pleas in the parliamentary
[00:12:15] plenary favorably, so Egypt knows it can count on
[00:12:18] Romania as a close friend in the European Union
[00:12:22] to facilitate and make meet
[00:12:25] the reciprocal strategic interests between the European Union and Egypt and of course
[00:12:28] ours are part of that, but this dimension of friends and
[00:12:32] important supporter of Egypt at the EU level is known in
[00:12:36] Cairo. If a Romanian company would want to enter the Egyptian
[00:12:40] market just to then expand into other areas,
[00:12:43] what would be the most important or
[00:12:47] interesting directions? I try to
[00:12:49] encourage Romanian companies to come and look much more closely at
[00:12:53] Egypt because it is a market of 110 million, so a
[00:12:56] large consumer market, it imports many things, it has this
[00:13:00] strategic position through which you can expand, so I hope
[00:13:04] we have Romanian companies interested in a serious way in exports to
[00:13:08] Egypt, but, as you already suggested, Egypt and as
[00:13:12] I was saying about this truly strategic geographical
[00:13:14] position, in Egypt you can set up even
[00:13:18] production capacities,
[00:13:21] enough to expand to the Middle
[00:13:25] East, but especially to North Africa, to other North African countries and to southern
[00:13:28] Egypt, to Central Africa. Egypt has very good relations with
[00:13:32] African states, it has expertise in Libya, which at some point
[00:13:36] is a country in the process of stabilization and having oil resources, it is a promising
[00:13:40] country, also towards Sudan and towards the East, now coming
[00:13:43] to, I gave you the geographical directions, towards what you could
[00:13:46] expand and it's important, having Cairo as a base, as a point
[00:13:50] of support Egypt, in
[00:13:53] the chapter of domains. I would see them largely
[00:13:57] as precisely agri-food, for all of Africa, food
[00:14:00] security of the population is a fundamental issue
[00:14:03] for practically any government, even those that are producers,
[00:14:07] so in the area of cereals and more sophisticated
[00:14:10] agri-food products, including
[00:14:13] bottled, preserved and of other kinds, I think
[00:14:17] a lot could be projected from Egypt taking into account
[00:14:20] the needs of Africa and population growth, in the area of
[00:14:24] energy products. It says and machinery and equipment in energy, we already have
[00:14:27] some signs and on storage capacities, these would be a
[00:14:31] second domain, so it's the area, let's say, of food
[00:14:35] security, that of energy security, in which we could be a much
[00:14:38] bigger player, and a third area would be digitalization.
[00:14:42] You were directly involved in the evacuation
[00:14:45] of Romanian citizens after the outbreak of conflicts in the
[00:14:49] last three years, what did it mean for you, how did it
[00:14:52] all look? We saw the images on TV,
[00:14:56] in two and a half years of mandate I did the statistics at one
[00:14:59] point, I evacuated 1002
[00:15:02] people, the vast majority Romanian citizens, but for
[00:15:06] the first stages, the first months of the mandate there were also Palestinian
[00:15:09] family members from Gaza, what did that mean for you as
[00:15:13] ambassador there, how does it look? It meant a baptism of fire,
[00:15:17] just think that practically the bloody
[00:15:20] attacks of Hamas happened on October 7th, I arrived
[00:15:24] in the morning of October 2nd, on
[00:15:28] October 7th, on the morning of October 8th, it was a Sunday, I still remember
[00:15:31] it, I was, I became a member of the crisis cell of the ministry, with
[00:15:35] other institutions, the whole embassy became part of the crisis cell to
[00:15:39] prepare the first measures to ensure
[00:15:42] somehow the security of the citizens, to inform what a
[00:15:45] crisis cell means? Specifically, evacuations
[00:15:48] mean that you might not sleep
[00:15:51] day and night, a week, 10 days in a row, that you reach your physical
[00:15:55] limits, it means a very close cooperation, to the
[00:15:59] second and permanent between the crisis cell in the
[00:16:02] ministry which brings together several institutions, but also colleagues from
[00:16:05] Ramallah, because on the part
[00:16:07] of Gaza, they had to take care, to identify, to keep in touch with these
[00:16:11] citizens and then with us so that we have the lists for reception,
[00:16:15] it means a huge inter-institutional effort, not only intra-
[00:16:18] Romanian, so to speak, Ramallah, Tel Aviv, Bucharest and us,
[00:16:22] it means cooperation day and night literally with the Egyptian
[00:16:26] authorities, in their case, with the Palestinian authorities, I never
[00:16:29] thought I would call deputy ministers at 3
[00:16:32] AM and not have, I had some reservations,
[00:16:36] but it was required. the rest of the Romanian citizens and I no longer cared,
[00:16:40] I finally put away my manners to call Egyptian deputy ministers at 3 AM
[00:16:44] when you haven't even met them and to start, you know
[00:16:47] I'm
[00:16:49] also a woman, my luck is also, what value
[00:16:53] Egypt has for us, Egypt supported not only us
[00:16:56] Romania but also especially we managed to do the first
[00:17:00] evacuations very quickly, almost all cases
[00:17:04] were validated, you know, they go through some security checks.
[00:17:07] almost all requested cases, every time we evacuate,
[00:17:11] we have all their support, promptly and like me, like all
[00:17:15] colleagues, when you evacuate, there is no day, there is no night, there is no food, there is no
[00:17:18] sleep, there is only one thing, to organize the operation in such
[00:17:22] a way as to get your Romanians or their family
[00:17:25] members out of the war zone, to bring them through all of Egypt, either through Rafah,
[00:17:29] when they come from Gaza they exit through Rafah, which is very far from
[00:17:32] Cairo, or through Taba, also
[00:17:36] hundreds of kilometers from Cairo. to bring them safely, to accommodate
[00:17:40] them, to feed them, to offer them medical treatment if needed,
[00:17:43] and then to coordinate constantly with Bucharest for the planes that will
[00:17:47] pick them up. It's easy to say, but it means operations almost like
[00:17:51] war and the embassy is like a sort of headquarters
[00:17:54] when we get into such operations,
[00:17:57] my luck, so it was a baptism of fire, you can imagine, even my colleagues didn't know me,
[00:18:01] I had been with them for five days, I think I didn't even have my mobile phone for
[00:18:05] Egypt yet and well, the phone was there but the bank account, there are some lengthy
[00:18:08] procedures, for example, I still hadn't settled in as a private person
[00:18:12] in Egypt, I wasn't yet fully functional as a private
[00:18:15] person when I entered the crisis cell and I no longer worried about personal
[00:18:19] matters, practically I only sporadically went
[00:18:22] home, staying at the embassy day and night, because
[00:18:26] of this, two parties that are at war have divergent interests,
[00:18:30] not everyone was interested in getting people
[00:18:33] out of there as quickly as possible, I'm not talking about the states of citizens,
[00:18:37] but the general dynamic of the conflict and when
[00:18:40] you knew that on your resilience, on your efforts, on lobbying, on
[00:18:44] pressure, on everything you do day and night,
[00:18:47] depends the fact that you can get some citizens out a day
[00:18:51] earlier or a day later, it could have meant the death of some of them, I
[00:18:55] was obsessed with this, besides, even if I had had time to sleep, I probably could have
[00:18:58] fallen asleep with this thought when you know that the lives of
[00:19:04] depend on you and your team and the support of your colleagues from Bucharest? A true
[00:19:08] diplomat cannot but dedicate himself completely, so it was
[00:19:11] exhausting, it was very tense for us, this
[00:19:15] responsibility, I'll give you a simple
[00:19:18] example to understand, when we reached the idea that
[00:19:22] now we are getting some citizens out of Gaza through Rafah, so another wave
[00:19:26] of evacuations was coming, the team that always went, a
[00:19:29] team of three or four people
[00:19:33] who are Arabic speakers. and experienced
[00:19:37] colleagues, they would arrive somewhere around the
[00:19:40] beginning of the morning, the middle of the morning in
[00:19:43] Rafah, all day long the citizens who were coming
[00:19:47] were processed, elderly, young, babies, separated families,
[00:19:50] whom you tried to put together, after which the next night
[00:19:54] they would drive through Sinai, through the mountains of Sinai on the roads
[00:19:58] there to come all the way to Cairo, so any evacuation operation means that
[00:20:01] the team on the ground and I who coordinated the connection between Rafah.
[00:20:05] Cairo and Bucharest, the planes that
[00:20:07] come, we are 36 hours awake
[00:20:11] with the clearest mind, only that and then another
[00:20:15] operation came. I was very emotional until the first evacuation, which
[00:20:19] was of 90-something people, because it kept
[00:20:22] being delayed, no state had managed to evacuate yet, it was delayed for about
[00:20:26] four weeks and I can now tell
[00:20:30] you from behind the scenes of the operations, because they slowly
[00:20:33] become history, twice the colleagues almost left, we met at night. in the
[00:20:37] embassy, we prepared the convoy of cars, we put the food for those
[00:20:41] we were going to get out and in the end not all the necessary clearances
[00:20:45] came and you can imagine how you go at night, you prepare
[00:20:48] and you wait until the last moment, do we start or do we not start, so there were also
[00:20:51] some attempts that were not carried out successfully, not
[00:20:55] because of our responsibility, but because all the complex procedures on both sides,
[00:20:58] not only Egyptian, had not been fulfilled, and then
[00:21:02] when the first real one left and this first wave
[00:21:06] succeeded, the joy was great, so
[00:21:09] I admit these are the most tense moments for a
[00:21:12] diplomat, but also the most satisfying, because you save
[00:21:16] lives and you feel, you feel every second and
[00:21:20] that the success depends on your skill, your calm,
[00:21:23] your experience and that of your colleagues. How can Romania
[00:21:26] extend its influence in this region and in what framework of
[00:21:30] collaboration? Perhaps a good
[00:21:33] option is also prioritizing certain states, because we no longer
[00:21:37] have representations in all African states. I don't even
[00:21:41] think it would be the case that we could sustain them, but it
[00:21:44] would be important for the somewhat broader
[00:21:48] regional effect. to
[00:21:52] the intensity of contacts, not only political, but also economic, we have extraordinary
[00:21:56] relations with all African states, we are still very much
[00:21:59] liked, you know this well, Romania is really very much liked, so to establish
[00:22:03] some points of support and some priority bilateral relations,
[00:22:07] on the other hand, and perhaps I should have started with this, because I know it so
[00:22:11] well, to adopt a renewed plan
[00:22:14] of action, regarding the strategy for Africa, we have a strategy for
[00:22:18] Africa, but due to developments sometimes perhaps even internal politics, we
[00:22:22] have not focused so much on relaunching these relations which was
[00:22:25] desired and on the updated investment, I mean
[00:22:28] the political and attention investment in Africa, although
[00:22:32] it is fertile ground, so it would be good to set some
[00:22:36] bilateral priorities and of course Egypt, I don't think I still need to
[00:22:39] argue that it should be among them, to look at how we can implement
[00:22:43] the strategy for Africa, it has many examples and concrete areas, it
[00:22:46] doesn't mean giving billions for Africa, but with the resources
[00:22:50] you have to go smart, as we say now, to
[00:22:53] have actions, projects through development
[00:22:57] funds and through political dialogue, through the support of
[00:23:00] smart companies that make a difference there and another
[00:23:03] important form where there is still much to
[00:23:07] be done is to have Romanian institutions and
[00:23:10] banking mechanisms that can support
[00:23:14] companies that want to enter Africa, no European
[00:23:17] country and in general economic actors, small companies in other countries do not
[00:23:21] enter Africa without any guarantee, when you want to open new markets
[00:23:24] very promising, Africa is the continent of the future, demographically
[00:23:28] and because of rare minerals, for many
[00:23:31] other reasons, you as a state, as
[00:23:35] banks, as
[00:23:38] financial institutions must be able to support those companies,
[00:23:42] not let them take this risk alone, because they are going for a
[00:23:45] national interest and in a strategic interest and for their profit, but
[00:23:49] also for... our country to have on one hand friends in this area, on the other hand
[00:23:53] export markets, so I think we still have to work on the institutional
[00:23:56] construction at home to share this risk with companies
[00:24:00] willing to enter Africa, so that they feel
[00:24:03] supported, to have part of the risk assumed, to have some
[00:24:07] preferential loans and certainly to always have the state by their side,
[00:24:11] first of all or starting and ending with their own
[00:24:14] ambassadors and their own embassies on the African
[00:24:17] continent. This is my last question, Madam Ambassador. How complicated
[00:24:21] are negotiations with the Arab world? You know it well, you studied it enormously before
[00:24:25] going into this position, what do
[00:24:28] things look like there, in an office where no filming is allowed, where you enter without
[00:24:32] phones and where you negotiate for Romania in another
[00:24:35] culture. Here I will have to rely more on
[00:24:38] my previous experience than on my current one as
[00:24:42] ambassador. I had few things to negotiate in the
[00:24:45] toughest, strongest, so to speak, sense of the word in
[00:24:49] Cairo. Because I am very lucky and
[00:24:52] advantaged by the fact that Romania is well regarded, by the fact that I am very
[00:24:56] well known, I am a very sociable country,
[00:24:59] I know a lot of people and I find a lot of
[00:25:02] openness wherever I go, from official to cultural elites, economic
[00:25:06] elites, I haven't had many things to negotiate
[00:25:09] with difficulty because it was quite easy for me to get where I wanted, especially
[00:25:13] since it was a mutually beneficial
[00:25:15] thing, but making now an appeal to my previous experience, I won't
[00:25:19] give state names, but yes, I was involved in some, in
[00:25:23] many negotiations and dialogues with
[00:25:26] countries, some hostile,
[00:25:29] with difficult, rigid diplomats, perhaps also with diplomats with
[00:25:32] prejudices, professionalism
[00:25:36] overcomes everything, so first of all, when
[00:25:39] diplomats recognize each other in the end beyond,
[00:25:42] true, professional diplomats who have polished their skills
[00:25:46] so to speak, their profession for a lifetime have a... way of
[00:25:50] recognizing each other, just as I assume you recognize a good,
[00:25:53] professional counterpart from another culture, country, I think
[00:25:57] if you have opposite, even from unfriendly
[00:25:59] positions, a professional, there is a... a kind of mutual
[00:26:03] respect that comes quite quickly, if you feel, beyond gender,
[00:26:06] beyond difference, no matter how hostile the respective state is, no matter how hostile the state is,
[00:26:10] there is, I don't know, a solidarity, there is a kind of
[00:26:13] recognition, identification, coding system and
[00:26:17] identification, we all know what a good diplomat means,
[00:26:20] there are also certain, not all traits, but a
[00:26:24] good part of the traits are the same in any country and
[00:26:29] you a lot, but I must... admit that
[00:26:33] for the most difficult negotiations I really prepared
[00:26:37] a lot by reading a lot about that negotiation
[00:26:40] culture, processing, rationalizing a lot
[00:26:43] what I was going to do, where I started from, where I wanted to get to,
[00:26:46] including all these things of
[00:26:51] attire to gestures, I prepared myself for a role in
[00:26:55] the most difficult negotiations I have had over
[00:26:58] time with this area and I also did
[00:27:01] extensive cultural and civilizational research, so to speak,
[00:27:05] before, you prepare first of all for everything you have to
[00:27:09] say, for the negotiation and compromise
[00:27:12] variants, for the documentation information of those programs, so you have to master
[00:27:16] the subject perfectly rarely, that is I sat with the file in front of me, but rarely
[00:27:20] did I have to flip through it too
[00:27:23] often, although we are talking about very large amounts of
[00:27:26] information, but from this point of view my former academic career and perhaps
[00:27:30] also experience help me, so I didn't look, besides assimilating
[00:27:34] that file in the smallest detail, I read a lot
[00:27:37] about that culture, that civilization, where they come from, what history
[00:27:40] they have, how they relate to women, how they relate to Romania, what is their
[00:27:44] manner of social presence, so I did a kind of
[00:27:47] broader research, to anticipate my
[00:27:50] interlocutor, once it was a
[00:27:54] lady, but generally they were interlocutors and
[00:27:57] it's, but it's very interesting, for me it's very interesting and then after
[00:28:01] you do all this documentation on the substance of the things you want to discuss or
[00:28:05] even negotiate, on the cultural, social context, of
[00:28:09] manner, of etiquette, of the broader context of that country, to get to
[00:28:12] know your counterpart and finally to see how much you have achieved of
[00:28:16] the goals that were set for you by the authorities that
[00:28:20] you know are in Romania's interest and it's difficult,
[00:28:23] a bit like the post in Cairo, it's difficult but full of
[00:28:25] professional
[00:28:29] satisfactions and stories to tell someday.
[00:28:32] Thank you for being present at the diplomatic world, I also thank you
[00:28:36] very much for the invitation.