Hey, Mongolia, Can You Get My Mail While I'm Gone?

What happens to an embassy when the ambassador leaves?

Brian Palmer
Slate
April 20

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Hugo Chávez wants to restore Venezuela's ambassador to Washington. The Venezuelan diplomat was expelled in September, after Chávez ejected the U.S. ambassador from Caracas. What happens to those fancy embassy buildings in Washington when an ambassador is ejected?

Nothing changes. The withdrawal or expulsion of an ambassador is a symbolic act of protest. The rest of the staff remains, and business continues as usual. Withdrawal of all diplomatic personnel from an embassy is a rare, cataclysmic, and sometimes violent event.

Under the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations, a host country can deem a member of a foreign mission a "persona non grata" for any reason or for no reason at all. The foreign government has no recourse, except for the usual reciprocal expulsion. These temporary moves are quite commonplace—Israel withdrew its ambassador to Switzerland today to protest the inclusion of Iran at the U.N. conference on racism. When an ambassador is expelled or withdrawn, the foreign government designates a stand-in for the ambassador, known as a "chargé d'affaires."

While the ambassador is easily expelled, the embassy is inviolable. The Vienna Convention requires the host country to protect the premises and prohibits the host from searching or requisitioning the property. For this reason, seizing an embassy represents a complete breakdown in relations. It has occurred only a few times in history, most famously in 1979, when Iranian militants seized the U.S. Embassy in Tehran and held the diplomatic staff hostage. Iran still holds the building and is required by the convention to protect it against damage or "impairment of its dignity." Leaders in Tehran, however, have threatened to auction it off—another Vienna Convention no-no—to settle a court judgment. When the United States cut ties with Cuba in 1961, the Cuban government temporarily seized its embassy before permitting the Swiss to represent U.S. interests from the same building. In 1977, U.S. personnel returned to the building, even though official diplomatic ties have never been re-established.

Governments do not voluntarily abandon embassy buildings, both because they're important to diplomacy and because they're valuable. In finding and purchasing an embassy, a foreign government must act like any other buyer. It hires an agent and searches for its dream home (although there are a few frugal renters out there). Many of the lavish embassy mansions on Massachusetts Avenue in Northwest Washington were bought from wealthy families whose patriarchs died, left the area, or fell on hard times. In some cases, the foreign government purchased the furniture and decorations from the owner as well. The more lavish buildings are worth tens of millions of dollars, although most were purchased decades ago for much smaller sums. The Indonesian Embassy, now valued at more than $30 million, was purchased in 1952 for a mere $335,000. Embassy buildings do, however, occasionally come on the market. In 1927, Canada purchased its embassy from the widow of Clarence Moore (who perished in the Titanic disaster), but the country eventually outgrew its starter home and sold it to recently recognized Uzbekistan in 1996.

Explainer thanks John B. Quigley of Ohio State University.

Brian Palmer is a freelance writer living in Columbia, Md.

Article URL: http://www.slate.com/id/2216530/

Speech Prompts Walkout at Racism Conference

Nick Cumming-Bruce and Isabel Kershner
The New York Times
April 20

A stream of delegates from France and other European nations walked out of a United Nations conference here on Monday in protest during a speech by the Iranian president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who criticized the formation of a “racist government” in the Middle East in a clear reference to Israel.

Sharpening the dispute over the Iranian presence, Israel also temporarily recalled its ambassador to Switzerland for “consultations” on Monday to protest the conference and a meeting held Sunday between the Swiss president, Hans-Rudolf Merz, and Mr. Ahmadinejad.

As Mr. Ahmadinejad took the podium here, two protesters, wearing colored wigs and shouting “Racist!” attempted to disrupt the beginning of his speech but were quickly hauled out by security officers, and he continued speaking.

Mr. Ahmadinejad began his remarks by saying the formation of the state of Israel left “an entire nation homeless under the pretext of Jewish suffering” in order to “establish a totally racist government in occupied Palestine.”

By creating the state of Israel in the wake of the Second World War, he continued, Europe and the United States “helped bring to power the most cruel, repressive and racist regime in Palestine.”

Amid a wave of applause from the galleries, delegates from the 23 European Union nations present stood up and filed out of the hall.

The conference, the first United Nations conference in eight years to address the issue of racism, was already being boycotted by Israel, the United States and several important allies.

The delegates reentered the meeting hall after Mr. Ahmadinejad finished his 30-minute address to continue working on the conference’s stated goal: a statement that condemns racism worldwide and identifies it as something that all governments should address.

Ban Ki-moon, the United Nations secretary general, strongly condemned Mr. Ahmadinejad’s remarks, calling them the “opposite of what this conference seeks to achieve.”

“I deplore the use of this platform by the Iranian president to accuse, divide and even incite,” Mr. Ban said in a statement. “We must all turn away from such a message in both form and subtance.”

Mr. Ban added that he regretted that Mr. Ahmadinejad had ignored his request, made at an earlier meeting, to use the conference to help galvanize the international community to fight racism.

Earlier, Israeli leaders reacted with deep dismay to news that Mr. Ahmadinejad, who has called the Holocaust a myth and advocated the destruction of the Jewish state, would speak at the conference.

In remarks at a cabinet meeting on Monday, on the eve of Yom Hashoah, the annual Holocaust Remembrance Day, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said: “Six million of our brethren were massacred during the Holocaust. Sadly, not everyone learned the lesson.”

“While we gather to honor their memory, in Switzerland there will assemble a conference allegedly aimed against racism,” he said. “Its guest of honor is a racist Holocaust-denier who does not hide his intentions to wipe Israel off the face of the earth.”

Referring to Mr. Ahmadinejad’s role at the conference, Mr. Peres said Monday: “There must be a limit, even to the neutrality of Switzerland. Today is the day? This is the man to speak? This is the outlook for the future?”

The walkout was a flashback to the initial world summit meeting against racism in 2001 in Durban, South Africa, which critics said served as a platform to bash Israel. The United States and Israel pulled out of that conference, and this year, objected to a paragraph in the draft declaration that reaffirmed the findings of the Durbin meeting. That section, along with a reference to incitement that Washington said might infringe on free speech, prompted the United States to announce its boycott with “regret” over the weekend.

Canada and Israel had already said they would not attend, and others who joined the boycott included the Netherlands, Italy and Australia.

The boycott decision was greeted with elation by American organizations supporting Israel, which had been protesting for months, but dismayed some rights organizations and African-American groups who accused the administration of skipping a historic opportunity to right past wrongs.

Mr. Obama said Sunday that he “would love” to participate in a conference that addressed racism and discrimination, but not one with the baggage of the previous gathering.

“Unfortunately, even though I think other countries made great efforts to accommodate some of our concerns and assured us that this conference would be more constructive, our participation would have involved putting our imprimatur on something that we just don’t believe,” Mr. Obama said.

While other governments who pulled out echoed Mr. Obama’s remarks, saying that the conference was being misused by some countries to single out Israel, the United Nations high commissioner for human rights, Navi Pillay, said the boycotting countries had allowed Middle East politics to intrude into a conference on discrimination.

“I am shocked and deeply disappointed by the United States’ decision not to attend,” Ms. Pillay said in a statement. “A handful of states have permitted one or two issues to dominate their approach to this issue, allowing them to outweigh the concerns of numerous groups of people that suffer racism and similar forms of intolerance.”

Human rights groups said countries that boycott the conference were losing the chance to set the record straight on racism. “These governments are ceding the floor to more radical voices,” said Juliette de Rivero, the Geneva advocacy director at Human Rights Watch.

Nick Cumming-Bruce reported from Geneva, and Isabel Kershner from Jerusalem. Neil MacFarquhar and Sharon Otterman contributed reporting from New York.

Switzerland, to decide availability of EU agreements

The extreme right Swiss national party started a campaign against the possibility that Bulgarians and Romanians work freely in the country. February 8 a referendum will be hold in order to decide if the citizens of these two countries could benefit of the same rights with older EU members. Swiss business leaders launched too a campaign in order to safeguard the agreement with the European Union. At the end of the last year, Switzerland joined Schengen area, and Lichtenstein remained as an inner border of the EU, its application to be part of the free travel agreement being still under consideration.