NEW EC DEPUTY DIRECTOR GENERAL FOR EXTERNAL

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