The wedding gifts.

AuthorRosenthal, James
PositionDiplomacy in Central African Republic

Diplomacy is more than high-level foreign policy-making and execution, formal negotiation of treaties and other agreements, carefully-crafted representations to foreign governments, and fancy parties and ceremonies. The mundane day-to-day issues a diplomat at a foreign post deals with can also be compelling. And sometimes a little goes a long way ... .

The Central African Republic, with its capital at Bangui, did not weigh heavily in U.S. foreign policy in the 1970's. Our instructions were essentially to maintain a modest official presence at minimum cost and worry to Washington, perhaps most aptly summed up as "Don't just do something--stand there". We had little at our disposal--a few thousand dollars in aid, 7 doughty Peace Corps Volunteers, and a small embassy staffed by a handful of Americans and local personnel.

So when the ruling dictator, the mercurial President for Life and Field Marshal Jean Bedel Bokassa, announced the "official" joint wedding of his two adopted daughters, we did not expect to figure in it prominently. The rest of the diplomatic corps, however, was in a tizzy over just what an official wedding meant and what their official participation and --most importantly--what their official wedding gifts (if any) might be.

We had not planned on any such gifts. However, our remarkable desk officer back in Washington somehow unearthed a couple of them at the White House--two large, handmade porcelain plates left over from President Nixon's historic trip to China a few months before--that she proposed as suitable offerings. We readily accepted, and soon the gifts arrived, impressively wrapped in gold ribbon prominently affixed with the presidential seal.

The Central African Foreign Office had directed that all gifts should be left off at their protocol office, from whence they would be forwarded to His Excellency the President for Life and the two brides-to-be. But I argued to the Director of Protocol that these were personal gifts from my sovereign leader to his and that I would like to present them directly to the President myself. The Director agreed, and a few days later I received a call saying that I should come to the presidential palace with my gifts the next afternoon.

At the appointed time my administrative officer and I, each bearing one of the precious packages, entered the palace reception room, where we found the Soviet and the Romanian ambassadors already waiting. They asked...

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