Prague, Oct 18 (CTK) – Czech Foreign Minister Lubomir Zaoralek considers it crucially important that President Milos Zeman’s meetings with foreign leaders abroad be attended by the Czech ambassadors to the respective countries, he said in a televised discussion Sunday.
Zaoralek said he will seek to prevent situations similar to Zeman’s meetings with the Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow and Beijing this year, at which the respective Czech ambassadors were not present.
The then Czech negotiators included people such as Zeman’s adviser Martin Nejedly, Zaoralek said.
“I think the participation of the ambassador is very desirable because we need to analyse it [the negotiations] as the Foreign Ministry. I consider this crucially important,” Zaoralek said.
“These are top-level meetings. It is important for us to exactly know what happened there,” he said.
The Czech ambassador to Russia is Vladimir Remek, former Czechoslovak astronaut whose nomination to the post was initiated by Zeman, Zaoralek pointed out.
In China, the Czech ambassador is Libor Secka. He attended Zeman’s meetings with Chinese representatives this year, but not his Beijing negotiations with Putin, Zaoralek said.
Zaoralek said Zeman had personally informed him about the meetings’ agenda, but he would prefer hearing the information directly from a diplomat.
“We will be striving for [a diplomat] being present there as from next time. I will recommend this to the president,” Zaoralek said.
Ambassadors’ participation in the president’s meetings with top foreign leaders abroad is not anchored as obligatory in any law, but it ensues from long-observed habits. If the president does not invite the respective ambassador to such a meeting, it looks as if the ambassador did not enjoy his confidence, Zaoralek said.
Prague plans to appoint 34 new ambassadors next year, Zaoralek said, adding that he wants the process to be smooth, unlike in the past, when disputes over ambassadors were underway between Zeman and the previous government.
“When I took up the post of minister [in early 2014], my goal was to ease [the tension],” Zaoralek said Sunday, adding that any efforts to change past decisions would not improve the atmosphere.
He was reacting to the question of whether he would strip Nejedly, Zeman’s adviser and executive of the Lukoil Czech Aviation company whom many criticise as controversial, of his diplomatic passport issued to him by former foreign minister Jan Kohout in late 2013.
