DIPLOMATS’ SAFETY UNDER THE MICROSCOPE

Embassy Magazine, Canada
Oct 5 2005

A look at security concerns behind the wheel

Paul Cellucci did something last week he hadn’t dared in four years
as U.S. Ambassador to Canada ­ got behind the wheel of a vehicle.

Mr. Cellucci, who completed his posting in Ottawa a few months ago
but returned last week to promote his book Unquiet Diplomacy as
part of the Ottawa International Writers Festival, said he’d been
enjoying chauffeuring himself around town all day. He discovered that,
amazingly, his navigational skills were pretty sharp considering he
learned the street names and travel routes as a passenger peering
through heavily-tinted windows.

As ambassador, Mr. Cellucci had been under heavy surveillance, a
microscope his successor David Wilkins is now under. In transit, a
bodyguard and driver from the Royal Canadian Mounted Police accompany
the ambassador on each and every car trip.

Only the American, Israeli and Turkish heads of mission in Ottawa
are given such privileges, or when security intelligence shows a
diplomat is under direct threat in the country, says Marcel Richard,
of the Protective Liaison Section of the RCMP.

“It may change from one day to the next,” he says. “If something
happens in the world and we feel that [one country] may be jeopardized,
we might offer to add security. We always have to see if it changed
security here in Canada.”

Envoys with special protection and their families are transported
from home to the office and to stops in between in an unmarked car,
equipped with police devices like radios and earpieces. Their vehicles
don’t sport the customary red diplomatic plates.

Under the Vienna convention on diplomatic relations, the host country
is responsible for the safety of diplomats and foreigners on official
business, like heads of state and political delegations. Dignitaries
visiting Canada are under the special watch of the RCMP.

A telephone hotline gives diplomats posted to Canada a way to reach
the RCMP directly if they get into a car accident or need another
type of assistance on the road or elsewhere, says Mr. Richard. In
Ottawa, the RCMP — as opposed to the city police force — is also
responsible for keeping a watchful eye on the diplomatic neighbourhood
of Rockcliffe, downtown missions and patrolling other areas where
foreign envoys gather.

Peter Marwitz, a former adviser of safety and security issues to
the RCMP and national security liaison office with the department
of Foreign Affairs, recalls three separate attacks in the 1980s on
Turkish diplomats in Ottawa by Armenian extremists, including one
involving an attache who was shot dead while idling at a red light
on Island Park Drive.

The targeted strikes were an impetus for security to improve in
the past 20 years, says Mr. Marwitz. Today, “the U.S. and Israeli
embassies are under constant threat,” he notes.

Asked whether Mr. Cellucci, now an executive at Canadian-owned Magna
Entertainment, was a moving target when he took to the driver’s seat
last week, Mr. Marwitz says any political danger has expired.

“Now that he’s no longer ambassador he can go wherever he wants,”
says Mr. Marwitz. “These terrorists aren’t going to get a slap on
the back if they get him now. His successor is now the one under
constant threat.”

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