An Accidental Diplomat: E-Book

Eamon Delaney

• Herausgeber: New Island
• Kategorie: Sachliteratur, Reportagen, Biografien
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2001

Beschreibung

'John Le Carré meets Bill Bryson with a touch of Yes Minister' - the Irish Times Eamon Delaney's controversial Number 1 bestselling exposé of backstage life at the Irish Department of Foreign Affairs. From the lonely nights at the Soviet Desk to glamorous soirées during Ireland's presidency of the emerging European Union, Eamon Delaney kept his ear to the ground - a useful skill when wedged precariously between Iran, Iraq and Israel at the UN General Assembly. And more useful still when, at the Irish Consulate, he travelled the strange world of Irish America, doing battle with radical nationalists and having to indulge in a painful amount of céilí dancing... And then there was Northern Ireland, and the Peace Process of 1993-1995, where no amount of dining, spying and manipulation was spared in the pursuit of the ultimate goal - the greater good of officialdom. Hilarious and at times deadly serious, An Accidental Diplomat offers a wry and irreverant view of the backstage dealings at foreign affairs. When diplomacy turned the other cheek, Eamon Delaney kept his eyes peeled... luckily for us, he was taking notes.

Leseprobe

AN ACCIDENTALDIPLOMAT

My Years in the Irish Foreign Service1987-1995

Eamon Delaney lives in Dublin where he is an author and freelance journalist, contributing to a variety of newspapers, magazines and radio programmes. In 1995, he published a novel, The Casting of Mr O’Shaughnessy. He is presently working on another but may yet come to regret the forfeit of a Civil Service pension.

Acknowledgements

My thanks to those who read the book in its early stages, including David Murphy, Mary Rose Doorly, John Ryan — who suggested the title — and Joe Joyce. Thanks also to my sister, Catherine, and to the many people who backed up facts and stories, especially Dermot McEvoy and Patrick Farrelly in New York, and Ray O’Hanlon of the Irish Echo. Special thanks must go to all at New Island Books, especially Ciara Considine and Edwin Higel for their help and perseverance and Joseph Hoban for publicity. And to Roddy Flynn, the editor, whose forensic eye and surgical suggestions did much to improve the clarity of the story. I also am grateful to Barry Lyons, solicitor, for legal advice and to Micheal O’Higgins, S.C. and Ronan Munro, who read the text at different stages.

AN ACCIDENTALDIPLOMAT

My Years in the Irish Foreign Service1987-1995

Eamon Delaney

AN ACCIDENTAL DIPLOMAT

MY YEARS IN THE IRISH FOREIGN SERVICE 1987-1995

First published June 2001 by

New Island

2 Brookside

Dundrum Road

Dublin 14

Ireland

www.newisland.ie

Copyright © 2001 Eamon Delaney

Print ISBN 978-1-90260-239-4

ePub ISBN 978-1-84840-331-4

mobi ISBN 978-1-84840-332-1

All rights rserved. The material in this publication is protected by copyright law. Except as may be permitted by law, no part of the material may be reproduced (including by storage in a retrieval system) or transmitted in any form or by any means; adapted; rented or lent without the written permission of the copyright owners. Applications for permission should be addressed to the publisher.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Contents

Prologue

Section I: Ireland

1Joining Up

2EU Co-ordination

3‘Our good friends, the Iraqis’

4The Soviet Desk

5‘Peaceful Co-existence’

6EU Presidency 1990

7Tehran or Toronto:

The Postings Lottery

Section II: United Nations

8The World in One Room

9Horse-trading on Human Rights

10A Walk in the Garden

11Gulf War

Section III: America

12Irish America

13Dancing for Ireland

14Greens Under the Bed

15Back to Ellis Island

16Protestors at the Gate

17High Season

Section IV: Northern Ireland

18Bugs and Shredders

19Border Travels

20‘Our Friends in the North’

21The Script Factory

22The Peace Process

23The Fall of Albert

24Buenos Aires or Bust

Glossary

For my mother, Nancy

A diplomat is someone who thinks twice before saying nothing.

Old French saying

Prologue

Dining Against the Government

I joined the Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) in 1987, a month before Charles J Haughey returned as Taoiseach, and one of my first tasks was to help the Department in plotting against him.

At the time, I was working in the Department’s European Union (EU) Co-ordination Section in Harcourt Street and I had to make contact with an incendiary group gathering in the basement of the Grey Door restaurant, off Dublin’s Fitzwilliam Square. Over a long and heavy lunch, embittered senior officials were drawing up ‘documents of resistance’. Coming into power, Haughey proposed to abolish the Department’s European Affairs Committee and its Northern Ireland Committee and replace them with Committees based in his own Department. These are the two most important aspects of Foreign Affairs business and the mandarins were up in arms. Or at least, at this stage, up in cigars and brandies.

Admittedly, mine was only a peripheral role, crossing St Stephen’s Green to collect newer and more militant drafts of this revolutionary Bull, but it offered an early and useful insight into some of the Department’s characters and their ability not just to ‘dine for Ireland’ but to ‘dine against the Government’. Haughey was regarded as a bête noire for DFA and, after five years out of office, he was back. There was great speculation in the media about what he would do with Foreign Affairs and the apocryphal story was again re-told of how, on leaving a function in Iveagh House, he stopped beneath the Portland portico and shouted back, ‘Cut their champagne allowance!’

There is always antipathy between Central Government and its Foreign Service — think of the Foreign Office and Thatcher, or the White House and the State Department. It is to be expected when diplomats go native and ‘internationalistic’ about issues which they are not elected to lead on. But in Haughey’s case the gripe was personal. During the Falklands war he defied most European opinion, and DFA, by wanting a more anti-British stand. In 1981, he tried to shift the Irish Ambassador to the US, Sean Donlon, out of Washington, annoyed by the profile the latter was gaining. Donlon, however, had successfully resisted, helped by senior figures in Irish-American politics, including the so-called ‘Four Horsemen’; Governor Hugh Carey; Speaker of the House of Representatives, Tip O’Neill and Senators Ted Kennedy and Daniel Patrick Moynihan. Since then Donlon had become Secretary of the Department. (Ironically, Donlon’s re-emergence ten years later, as Northern Ireland adviser to the Fine Gael Taoiseach, John Bruton, would create conflict between the Taoiseach and DFA.)

In general, Haughey felt that DFA should take a more radical stand on Northern Ireland (NI), at least rhetorically. This was ironic given that the Department was probably more sincerely nationalistic than most politicians, including Fianna Fáil, and had actually achieved, under Fine Gael, the Anglo-Irish Agreement in 1985. But this was part of the problem and Haughey, in opposition, threatened not to work the Agreement when he got back to office.

In fairness to Haughey, the intense work on that Agreement had created an extraordinary bond between the upper echelons of DFA and the outgoing Fine Gael (FG) administration. This was particularly the case with Donlon, who worked closely with the previous Minister, Peter Barry. And with Michael Lillis, the head of Anglo-Irish Division, who used to go on holidays in Cyprus with the FG leader, Garret FitzGerald.

FitzGerald regarded DFA almost as a personal fiefdom having presided over its rapid expansion as a dynamic Foreign Minister in the early Seventies (an expansion that would lead to a terrible promotional bottleneck twenty years later). But it was an uncomfortable relationship. In 1987, when Fine Gael finally and reluctantly went to the polls, they held their opening press conference in the ballroom of Iveagh House. ‘We should get the place fumigated,’ someone said afterwards, correctly anticipating that we would soon be facing a new regime.

Fine Gael, and their former Labour partners, lost the election and those who were tainted didn’t waste much time getting out. Donlon was gone by March and Lillis also departed, but not before a story appeared in the papers saying he had turned down becoming Ambassador to Britain. Stuff like this got right up Fianna Fáil’s nose. Lillis and Donlon scarpered off to the private sector and got jobs with Guinness Peat Aviation (GPA), the aircraft leasing group. Others followed and even some Third Secretaries joined GPA. Even old Garret himself got on board. It was like the ‘Fall of Saigon’, except this time we were leasing the planes.

The promise of Haughey’s return to power engendered much gleeful speculation about what he would do with the gin-swilling diplomats. In Dublin erroneously reported that the shredders were working ‘late into the night’ in Iveagh House, as if it really was the Fall of Saigon. In fact such speculation showed little appreciation of the continuity of Government. Or of the fact that the Civil Service is the real and permanent Government and that the politicians are only puppets, time-serving mannequins who, if they are clever, will work to the strengths of their scriptwriting masters.

This Haughey did. It helped, of course, that replacing the departed Sean Donlon as Secretary was Noel Dorr, a monkish and mild-mannered man with a slight stoop. He was the ideal Civil Servant; incredibly bright, attentive but invisible. You’d hardly know he was in the room. For this reason, perhaps, he was known as the Late Mr Dorr. The other reason was his occasional habit of arriving late for meetings, a habit that enraged Haughey. One head of Anglo-Irish who arrived, late and windswept, to a meeting in Government Buildings was told by a typist: ‘I wouldn’t go in, if I was you.’

‘Oh, but I must,’ he insisted and when he went in Haughey didn’t say anything to him. He just ignored his presence for the whole duration of the meeting. By contrast, Haughey’s habit was to arrive ten or fifteen minutes early for events, a tactic that unnerved opponents and put everyone off their guard. Even when his belated humiliation came up at Dublin Castle in 1997, he cheated the waiting crowd and media by arriving into the Castle over three hours early.

In fact, Haughey worked well with Dorr. Unlike other politicians who might resent the intellectual airs of the mandarins, Haughey would use and respect such advice. Dorr had been Ambassador to the UN and, by extension, Chairman of the Security Council when Haughey had tried to change our policy on the Falklands but CJ seemed to have forgiven the difficulties of that time. (Unlike the British, who saw it as a treacherous move, which may have set back Irish-British relations by almost three years).

Although perceived to be close to Fine Gael, having worked closely with Garret and Peter Barry on the Agreement, Dorr was scrupulous in trying to establish an even-handed image for DFA. Or, at least, balanced away from FG. In this, he was helped greatly by Dermot Gallagher, head (or Assistant Secretary) of the Anglo-Irish Division and Ted Barrington, head of Administration.

Nevertheless Haughey would, in 1987, make surgical incisions into DFA, one in taking Northern Ireland ‘away’ from Foreign Affairs and making it answerable to his own Department (the Department of the Taoiseach retains partial responsibility for Northern Ireland to this day). The other was in abolishing the European Communities Committee and replacing it with ‘the Geoghegan-Quinn Committee’, based at his own Department and chaired by Máire Geoghegan-Quinn, his Minister of State. This was the Committee I would work to.

These may seem like significant structural changes. The reality was that the day-to-day work on NI and Europe would still be done at DFA. But they were still too much for the more colourful mandarins and a group was assembled to draw up a document protesting these ‘unwarranted changes’. The Grey Door was a fitting venue; around the corner from the Department, it was often used to entertain foreign diplomats. Each time I collected a draft, dragging the pages out of the debris of up-ended glasses and balled napkins, the inevitable vermilion-faced toad would wave away the smoke and shout, ‘Send it to Kinsealy!’ or ‘Wrap it round the wooden stake!’ (this last a reference to Conor Cruise O’Brien’s famous remark that the only way CJ Haughey could be removed from political life would be if they buried him at the crossroads with a wooden stake through his heart. The Cruiser was ex-DFA, of course).

Mindful of this decadent atmosphere — it was now about four p.m. — my Counsellor came over and apologised for the confusion, but the others mocked his concern, to a chorus of guffawing laughter. ‘You guys are going for a hop,’ I thought as I fled their laughter and emerged back up into the daylight of the street. They were an eclectic bunch and if the incoming Secretary was around — Dorr was away with the incoming Minister, Brian Lenihan — I doubt he would have approved of such liquid restiveness.

In his absence, the Deputy Secretary, Robin Fogarty was in the chair, an addition which must have given the proceedings an extra charge. Fogarty was a volatile figure. A former Ambassador in Bonn and Tokyo, he had had a tempestuous relationship with Haughey, exacerbated by the fact that both he and Haughey had had a close relationship with the social diarist Terry Keane and reputedly came near to blows over her on the steps of the United Arts Club. (Indeed, Fogarty would later have a splendid reunion with Haughey in 1990 when the Taoiseach flew out for the World Cup celebrations in Rome, but more of that anon.)

The other main figure in the Grey Door was Caligula, who wanted me to sow a little ridge of spring onions. A sulphurous character, he was almost recalled as a European Ambassador when he reportedly insulted a major Irish political figure. Called home to account for himself, Caligula was asked by Noel Dorr, in his rhetorical way, if he ‘could see himself to retiring’ to which Caligula is supposed to have replied, if Dorr could ‘see himself to fucking off’. The story is probably apocryphal but I’m sure the tenor of the meeting is correct. It is almost impossible to fire an Ambassador. Indeed, it is almost impossible to fire a Civil Servant, short of an Act of the Oireachtas, but with Ambassadors this is particularly hazardous, given the possibilities for eccentricity after half a lifetime of walking around in the tropical heat being called ‘Your Excellency’. If persuasion to voluntary retirement doesn’t work, the only solution is hotter and even more faraway places.

Anyway, going back to 1987, and the Grey Door, there were other characters mixed up in the smoky intrigue but since I’d just joined DFA, I couldn’t put names to their mutinous faces. Certainly the big empty desks back in Harcourt Street suggested that most of the Counsellors were there. The document they eventually produced was an extraordinary mixture of high dudgeon protest and special pleading, even if its essential points were valid.

It begins: ‘There are negative implications in [Haughey’s] decision insofar as the role and standing of this Department are concerned, which are most disturbing.’

‘Disturbing’ was a word mandarins used about suspected fraud, or a shoot-to-kill allegation in the North, so it was not employed lightly. A more conciliatory opening line had conceded that ‘the decision is obviously aimed at streamlining and improving arrangements for the interdepartmental co-ordination of Community policy making.’ But this generous observation was vehemently scratched out by the red pen of Robin Fogarty.

The background was then outlined to the ‘longstanding and well-established role of this Department which has the primary responsibility for coordinating Ireland’s overall approach on EU matters’. ‘The question must be asked’ it continued in a self-pitying whine, ‘whether the decision … reflects dissatisfaction with the working of the previous arrangements and with the role and performance of this Department.’ Ouch.

There were descriptions of DFA’s Economic Division and of the Permanent Representation in Brussels, and their sensitive and direct roles with regard to the EU. But they were described in that childlike way you use when you want to drum-something-home-with-short-sentences. Do you get me at all? It virtually asked whether the incoming Taoiseach was ‘aware that we have an Embassy in Brussels’?

But the real beef was with the new Geoghegan-Quinn Committee, to be based at the Taoiseach’s Department. ‘Is this Committee to replace the European Communities Committee which has, since Ireland joined the Community, been chaired by the Secretary and more recently the Deputy Secretary of Foreign Affairs?’ Ah — the Deputy Secretary Robin Fogarty — the real beef. The marrow in the bone, if you like. Here, perhaps, we began to see the true motivation behind this extraordinary protest.

‘If so,’ the note went on, developing a ‘my good man’ tone, ‘who is to service the Committee and provide the Secretariat?’ (It was a question I personally would answer with my feet carrying documents back and forth across St. Stephen’s Green between DFA and the Department of the Taoiseach.) ‘The DFA has always serviced the European Communities Committee and provided the Secretariat,’ it concluded on what was either a defiant or defeatist note; it was hard to tell which.

Nor was the composition of the new Committee to their liking; it was be comprised solely of Ministers and the Secretary of the Taoiseach’s Department and of the Government. ‘It was the practise in the previous Cabinet Committee for senior officials to accompany their Minister. The Deputy Secretary of Foreign Affairs invariably accompanied his Minister.’ Ah, Robin again. CJ wouldn’t have to look too far to see the real Oxo-cube in this festering stew.

But, lest people think that DFA were just protecting themselves, the note also came to the defence of their old Departmental rivals, Industry and Commerce, whose Minister, strangely, was not automatically on the Committee but would attend ‘as required’. Instead, their Minister of State would attend. Roused to protest, the note summoned history to its side and stiffly pointed out that ‘since the accession negotiations of 1970, the Department of Industry and Commerce had been one of the “core” members of the co-ordination structure on European Community affairs’.

‘The responsibilities of the Minister,’ it noted dryly with respect to Community policy, ‘are wider than those of the Minister of State at his Department’. No kidding.

This spirited blow for the Department of Industry and Commerce made me wonder afterwards if maybe some of their mandarins had come up from Kildare Street and had been seated around that Grey Door table. It is quite possible given that I didn’t recognise all the faces amidst the haze of blue smoke and rebellion. The key may be the curious ‘accession’ reference for, back in 1970 one of those directly involved in the negotiations around entry to the then EEC was no less than Robin Fogarty himself. And he might well have tipped his cigar towards his old groundbreaking Ind and Comm buddies and said ‘Don’t you worry, I’ll get onto Haughey about this’.

The document should have been the opening salvo in a DFA campaign to protect itself against Haughey but sadly, Haughey was singularly unmoved by the appeals within this unsigned and collaborative protest. And that appeared to be the end of it, especially since the new Minister, Brian Lenihan, was unlikely to take up the cudgels on the Department’s behalf. As a living testimony to the failure of this Grey Door intrigue, I was very soon making my way over to the Taoiseach’s Department with papers for the new Committee. Presumably, the entreaty just went straight into the mythical shredder. Or perhaps Haughey, realising the venue of its composition, decided to take it with him to his own favourite restaurant, Le Coq Hardi, from where I saw him emerge later that week, very much back in Government. And very much ‘unperturbed’ by paper jets.

Section I

Ireland

1

Joining Up

In the centre of Dublin, on the south side of St Stephen’s Green is Iveagh House, headquarters of the Department of Foreign Affairs, the Irish foreign service. It overlooks the Green and is a fine building, with a white portico frontage and lavender-glassed lanterns which give it an unusually camp quality. At night, beneath the portico, a Garda is on duty, with another inside the house and another outside the Department of Justice next door. On the roof, a large spiky aerial keeps All Missions Abroad (Embassies and Consulates) in constant contact with ‘HQ’, as they call it. Sometimes, at night, when all the chandelier lights are blazing, the place looks like a Viennese Opera House, which is appropriate given its history and that of its former inhabitants.

Originally, the house belonged to Dr Robert Clayton, the Protestant Bishop of Cork, who fell into public disgrace in the 1740s when he disputed aspects of the Holy Trinity. It then passed to John Philpot Curran, Master of the Rolls in the doomed Irish Parliament of the 18th century, and father of Sarah Curran, fiancée of Robert Emmet, the young rebel and beheaded patriot. In 1856, the Guinness family acquired it and, after an extravagant makeover, the house served as a major venue for Vice-Regal society with its many balls and parties. But Irish independence saw the end of that privileged world. ‘Deeply distressed’ by 1916 and other ‘upheavals’, the Earl of Iveagh adjourned to London and, in 1939, his son offered the house to the State. There was a story that when the Taoiseach, Eamon de Valera personally came around to see it, a man, still employed as a butler, and rubbing the sleep from his eyes, came out to open the door. ‘Come for the Last Waltz, my lord?’

Inside the house, are some of the most impressive rooms in the city. The stone-flagged entrance hall is adorned with Italian statues of The Sleeping Faun and The Reading Girl. A sweeping, double return staircase, wide enough to accommodate the ball-goers dresses, and surrounded by rococo and neo-classical motifs, leads up to a ballroom at the back of the house, lined with gilt and mirrors and apparently (and, appropriately, given the diplomatic connotations) inspired by the palace at Versailles. Around the room are balconies and alcoves where once dancers retreated to fan themselves and mark their dance cards. It is here that receptions are held, Inter-Governmental meetings and Departmental parties. Materials were sourced from afar; onyx, alabaster, West Indian mahogany. At the core of the house are further ornate rooms, serving as chambers for the Minister, Minister of State and the Department Secretary. In and around these are the secret passageways and back stairs of the servants, now used by lowly officials like myself.