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

how hard it was for the two halves to come together. And this, of course, was under the
ideal circumstances of a very affluent West Germany investing an immense amount in
reunification. You know they converted East Marks into West Marks at a one-to-one rate.
What a great deal for the East Germans. But the fact that there were still all these
difficulties and tensions made me wonder how difficult it was going to be to integrate the
rest of Eastern and Central Europe into the global economy. This was, after all,
something with which no one had experience, something never done before. But I am
glad to say that, in retrospect, I think this actually went better than I expected at the time.
I would not have guessed that ten years later so many of these new democracies would be
in the European Union. I thought it would take much longer but I am glad I was wrong.
Q What other issues did you work on? Did you do a lot of travel as DAS?
PERINA: I did a modest amount of travel, primarily because Kornblum was always on
the road, and I had to hold the fort down in Washington. But I did make some visits to
Sarajevo and saw it for the first time since the end of the fighting. The devastation was
truly shocking. Miles and miles of just rubble. It showed that this had not been just a
regional conflict but really a total war. On the other hand, I also visited the three Baltic
republics for the first time ever and was surprised at how good they looked despite half a
century in the Soviet Union. On another trip I visited Albania, which was going through a
very difficult period. I met with President Berisha and drove through the country from
Montenegro to Macedonia. It did impress me as poorer than Kosovo and was politically
very unstable. There was a lot of opposition to Berisha, demonstrations, scandals and so
on. It generated a lot of work for us. Otherwise, I traveled to Western Europe for contact
group meetings and other events. Once I actually flew overnight to London and then back
to Washington on the same day. I would not recommend it and never did it again. It was
hard to get away from Washington. As the Senior DAS, I had a flow of day-to-day issues
and meetings that never ceased. It was really one of my least favorite jobs. I always
preferred working overseas to working in the Washington bureaucracy.
Q: How did the Moldova assignment come about?
PERINA: I wanted to go somewhere in the former Soviet Union. I was tired of the
Balkans and realistically not going to get an ambassadorship in Western Europe.
Moldova was what I was offered. It was one of the republics I had never visited in the
Soviet Union, and I did not know much about it. But it turned out to be a very pleasant
surprise for us. It was a much more pleasant place than we had imagined. The people
were extremely friendly and hospitable, and the country was very interesting to work in.
It had all the economic and political problems endemic to other parts of the former Soviet
Union plus an unresolved conflict over the secessionist region of Transnistria. Working
on this conflict in fact then lead to my subsequent assignment as the Special Negotiator
for Eurasian conflicts.
Q: You were there from when to when?
PERINA: I was in Moldova from September of 1998 until September of 2001.
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