ambassador rudolf v. perina - Association for Diplomatic Studies and ...

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heard about Jimmy Carter—that he was very hands-on, meticulous, and would study in detail anything that people put in front of him. The most interesting thing in this period was that I attended part of the first CSCE followup meeting in Belgrade, Yugoslavia. This was in late 1977 and early 1978. In the Helsinki Final Act it said that periodically there would be follow-up meetings to see how the document was being implemented. The first such meeting was held in Belgrade, and the head of our delegation was Arthur Goldberg, a very prominent and senior figure. The Soviet ambassador was Yuri Vorontsov, who later became a deputy foreign minister and ambassador to Washington and had the reputation of being a very tough guy. With the personalities of Goldberg and Vorontsov, and the prominence of human rights in Jimmy Carter’s foreign policy, Belgrade had all the ingredients for a clash between the U.S. and the Soviet Union. This in fact happened. I wasn't on the delegation the whole time but I was there for probably about half of the conference in 1978. There was a debate within our delegation and later within the NATO caucus on whether Western delegations should name names of dissidents in the Soviet Union. The Soviets considered just the subject of human rights to be interference in internal affairs, and naming names of specific dissidents like Natan Sharansky or Yuri Orlov was unprecedented and seen by some of our allies as too provocative. Many of our European friends were concerned that the Soviets might use it as an excuse to walk out of the conference and thus kill the entire CSCE process. Goldberg mulled the issue over and decided that he would name names. We prepared a speech where he referred to several prominent dissidents, including Sharansky and Orlov, whose names were known in the West. I remember when he delivered the speech in the plenary how everyone held their breath on how the Soviets would react. Well, they denounced the speech but did not walk out of the meeting. They stayed but maintained their argument that this was not a legitimate discussion topic and that it was interference in the internal affairs of the Soviet Union. Of course, when Goldberg read his statement, the Soviets knew of it in advance and Vorontsov himself didn't attend. He sent his deputy. These Basket III issues dominated the whole meeting. There were also many less prominent names, particularly of refuseniks, which we were asked by Congress and others to raise with the Soviets. We had a list of several hundred names which we could not raise orally in the meeting. So we attached the names to a diplomatic note which we sent to the Soviet delegation. The lists came back to us seemingly unread with the notation that they were not an appropriate topic for discussion between the United States and the Soviet Union. Basically, the argument the Soviets tried at that time and for many years thereafter was to say that this was not the business of the United States or any other country—that we were interfering in their internal affairs. This was a very weak, legalistic-type of argument which predictably did not work or deter the United States. Q: The Helsinki Accord did also have a provision on interference in internal affairs, no? PERINA: Yes, it did have such a provision. The Helsinki Final Act was a consensus document, and thus it had a lot of internal contradictions, or at least provisions open to 24
very different interpretations. The thing to remember is that it was a political document, and the entire review process was likewise very political. We focused on certain principles, and the Soviets focused on others. They would have wanted to use the CSCE gradually to weaken NATO and to create a new European security system. We wanted to use the process to advance human rights and overcome the division of Europe, weaken the Iron Curtain if you will. It was a political debate, and the Soviets could not stop it with legalistic arguments. They were in a much weaker position because the document put these human rights issue on the diplomatic agenda, and they could not put the genie back in the bottle. They could refuse to talk about these provisions, but they could not stop others from talking about them. In subsequent years, one of my bosses, Jack Maresca, who worked on negotiation of the Helsinki Final Act and wrote a book about the CSCE, said that the Soviets considered walking out of the process a number of times but could not figure out how to do it because of one provision in the so-called Blue Book, which contained the rules of procedure of CSCE and was adopted with the Final Act. This provision in the Blue Book said that no follow-up meeting would end until it had determined the date and place of the next follow-up meeting. Thus if the Soviets walked out, the meeting would technically never conclude and would be a constant problem for them on the international agenda. It could go into recess but then be called back whenever the West wanted to give Basket III issues prominence again. So it was sort of a Catch 22. It in fact guaranteed the CSCE perpetual life unless there was a new consensus to change the Blue Book rule. Q: Could you explain what a refusenik was. PERINA: Well, a refusenik was basically someone who was being refused a visa to emigrate from the Soviet Union, and by and large at that time it was primarily Jewish emigrants who were trying to leave. There were also others, however, like the Baptists who took refuge in the basement of our Moscow embassy for several years and whom I met during my later tour there. Q: So what years did you work in this office? PERINA: I was in EUR/RPM from the winter of 1976 to the summer of 1978. Q: Did you get any feel for things happening in Eastern Europe and in the Soviet Union at this time that would later lead to the Velvet Revolution, the fall of the Berlin wall and the events of 1989? Did you sense anything cooking there or was all of this still below the surface? PERINA: I certainly did not expect the fall of communism ten years later, or even in my lifetime. The 1989 events were anticipated by very few experts. But there certainly were signs of growing dissent and dissatisfaction in Eastern bloc countries. The Final Act was a perfect example. When it was adopted, the signing countries all agreed that they would make efforts to publish and disseminate the text to their publics. The Soviets did in fact publish it widely, probably thinking that the Basket III provisions would get no more 25
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Page 3 and 4: Holbrooke visits Albanians Dayton M
Page 5 and 6: throughout the country were execute
Page 7 and 8: capitalists and so on. At that time
Page 9 and 10: taken to an apartment which initial
Page 11 and 12: Q: You said that after Cleveland yo
Page 13 and 14: they agreed to send me there. Marxi
Page 15 and 16: most comprehensive collection of in
Page 17 and 18: Q: What was the background of your
Page 19 and 20: is there from that trial?” I thou
Page 21 and 22: word that he was going to come to a
Page 23: Q: During the Vietnam War, there wa
Page 27 and 28: Q: So you were there from 1979? PER
Page 29 and 30: I will always remember that staff m
Page 31 and 32: was very tough. We did suspend the
Page 33 and 34: line was that a person was made to
Page 35 and 36: there. The Polish economy was nose-
Page 37 and 38: Q: What sorts of issues did you tal
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Page 47 and 48: PERINA: Yes, they did. Jumping ahea
Page 49 and 50: Those plenary sessions I actually w
Page 51 and 52: PERINA: That is exactly right. The
Page 53 and 54: Q: OK, in 1989 you’re going to th
Page 55 and 56: PERINA: This was an issue because o
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Page 59 and 60: Soviet domination. They had histori
Page 61 and 62: Q: That was my impression as well w
Page 63 and 64: welcoming dinner in a restaurant an
Page 65 and 66: Q: How were you received by the Ser
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Albanians were very anxious to have
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I remember Holbrooke’s first visi
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cannot now remember what finally tr
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Q: And this was not an idle comment
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price for having a very bad leaders
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PERINA: Certainly during the period
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Q: So you took over the Holbrooke r
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PERINA: Not really. We coordinated
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why I believed that it was not wort
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Q: Can you give a brief summary of
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PERINA: Well the American interests
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shorter visits of three to four wee
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Q: How so? PERINA: Well, he felt un
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Q: Still, it strikes me that all of
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As for the European Union, most Mol
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PERINA: Nagorno-Karabakh is the mos
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e called the “Prague Process” w
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we physically crossed the front lin
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were about three-quarters of the po
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down to the Black Sea. Since I was
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PERINA: It is difficult to say. He
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political interests to keep it goin
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a huge personal embarrassment. It l
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clearly followed the advice because
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good governance and so on. In its b
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Deputy Secretary, Richard Armitage,
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PERINA: Relations with Europe were
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End of interview 129
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ambassador rudolf v. perina - Association for Diplomatic Studies and ...

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