It's Finland's war too
Foreign Minister Erkki Tuomioja and his subordinates found themselves in the middle of the latest crisis in the Middle East
By Heikki Aittokoski and Anu Nousiainen
The Foreign Minister is late. It is Monday afternoon, and Erkki Tuomioja should have been answering reporters' questions about the crisis in Lebanon already an hour ago.
The journalists wait patiently at the main government building. Apparently other government ministers and the President have many questions for Tuomioja, which is why it is taking so long.
Then Tuomioja arrives, and says what he has to say without formality. He is wearing a light-coloured jacket and a checkered shirt, and carrying his familiar black Marimekko shoulder bag.
If Tuomioja is tired, he does not show it, even though this frenzy has continued for three weeks, ever since Hezbollah kidnapped two Israeli soldiers, and Israel bombed Beirut Airport.
The Foreign Minister actually exudes a sense of calm and self-confidence when he says that this is now a "test of whether or not the EU is capable of action and having an influence".
Meanwhile, in Lebanon, Israeli air strikes and artillery fire continue, even though Israel had promised to refrain from air strikes for two days to allow civilians to escape the war. Hezbollah also continues to fire its rockets at Israel.
Today Tuomioja is surrounded by Finnish journalists, but in recent days he has also been quoted by such leading American newspapers as The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal, as well as Asharq Alawsat (a leading newspaper of the Arab world), news agencies, and the television channel al-Jazeera...
Suddenly a Finnish politician is in the limelight of the international media, working on a major crisis - a new war in the Middle East. Nothing like this has been seen since President Martti Ahtisaari negotiated a peace for Kosovo with Slobodan Milosevic in 1999.
Was the Foreign Ministry ready for the Finnish turn at the EU Presidency to begin with a new crisis in the Middle East? Was it ready for Tuomioja and his staff to end up in the middle of bewildering steps in international diplomacy? Rarely do Finns have the chance to observe how the most decisive crisis of the present moment is dealt with from a box seat.
Monday evening grows dark, but light can still be seen from the tall windows of the building of the Foreign Ministry.
Tuomioja is speaking on the telephone. During the weekend he has been in contact with the Secretary-General of the UN, the foreign affairs envoy of the EU, the European Commissioner for External Affairs, the Lebanese Prime Minister, the Foreign Minister of Egypt...
He has also telephoned nearly all of his foreign minister colleagues in the EU. Only five out of 24 to go. They need to be contacted this evening, because on Tuesday there is an extraordinary EU foreign ministers' meeting in Brussels, which has been convened by Finland. There they are supposed to sign a declaration calling for an immediate end to the fighting in Lebanon.
However, the draft is still incomplete. Although it is not lengthy - it covers just under two sheets of paper - the document is still being fine-tuned under the supervision of Pilvi-Sisko Vierros-Vielleneuve, the head of the ministry's political section.
Another official, Sofie From-Emmesberger, has written the first text, which the Finnish EU Representation has commented on.
That is the text that Vierros-Villeneuve and her colleague Jarno Syrjälä are now working on. It is occasionally shown to Tuomioja, and more work is done on it.
In international diplomacy, formalities and choices of words are incredibly important. It is known what issues are important for which countries. Finland wants to keep the plight of the Palestinians in Gaza on the table.
Finally the draft is getting ready.
According to the paper, the EU foreign ministers are calling for an "immediate ceasefire".
The draft is on board flight AY811 to Brussels on Tuesday morning. The plane leaves Helsinki at 7:35.
Tuomioja is almost the last passenger to step into the plane. Actually the Foreign Minister has had enough of flying. Without the Middle East, this would be his summer holiday.
Crisis or no crisis, he still tries to run his regular ten kilometres as often as possible. The phone rings even while he is running. "Twice on average, and a few SMS messages", Tuomioja says when his seat belts are fastened.
"No privacy anywhere."
The previous weekend, he had flown on Friday at six in the morning to Rome, from there to Tel Aviv, and from there by helicopter to Beirut, via Cyprus, and later to Helsinki via Brussels, and home to Tuusula on Saturday at half past three in the early morning.
Almost everyone in the business class of flight AY811 is from the Foreign Ministry: Tuomioja, Vierros-Villeneuve, Syrjälä, and special aide Keijo Norvanto.
Tuomioja has an aisle seat in the second row of the plane. He has with him his Marimekko bag, a detective novel by Henning Mankell, and the Financial Times.
However, the most important paper of the day is in the possession of Vierros-Villeneuve, who is in the aisle seat of the first row: the draft, the content of which is a carefully-guarded secret.
Tuomioja and his subordinates know that it will be a day of haggling over words.
"There is no such thing as a precision war", Tuomioja says. "At least half of the so-called surgical strikes miss their targets. Half of that half cause collateral damage."
Two days earlier Israel attacked the village of Qana with extremely devastating consequences. At least 28 civilians, including many children, were killed in the rubble of an apartment building that collapsed from the bombs.
Perhaps for this reason the draft includes a statement according to which the neglect of necessary advance measures to prevent civilian deaths is a serious violation of international humanitarian law.
However, this sentence never sees the light of day.
In Brussels, the Finnish draft is worked on with the EU's foreign affairs envoy Javier Solana and by the Commissioner for Foreign Relations, Benita Ferrero-Waldner. Then, just half an hour before the ministers' lunch, which is scheduled for one in the afternoon, it is distributed in sealed envelopes. The delegation of each country gets one envelope.
The foreign ministers eat their lunch, with lamb as the main course. At the same time blood is flowing in the Middle East, and the Finnish Foreign Minister is supposed to persuade his colleagues to back a common statement.
Of the 25 foreign ministers, no fewer than 24 are present. Only Slovakia is missing.
Debate on the wording takes place behind the scenes. Ministers are the only ones sitting at the large oval table. Only the holder of the rotating presidency can bring along a second minister, Paula Lehtomäki, and two civil servants. They are Vierros-Villeneuve and Eikka Kosonen, the head of the Finnish Representation to the EU.
Everyone on the scene wants the floor, everyone has something to say, but there everything remains civil. Vierros-Villeneuve and Kosonen write down key points and amend the draft statement accordingly.
Outside the dining room the original text has leaked to the international media, although no outsiders are supposed to have access to it. While the ministers are still busy with their food, Reuters quotes an unnamed British civil servant, who says that the UK cannot accept the Finnish text under any circumstances.
Tuomioja gets a printout of the item. He reads it out at the meeting before it is the turn of British Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett to speak. Beckett apologises for the statement of her civil servant, and says that it does not mesh with her views.
When the three-hour lunch is over, the draft has changed. The reference to the violation of humanitarian law has turned into an appeal, and a promise to send EU forces has been replaced by a promise to "participate" in a Lebanon operation.
The demand for an immediate ceasefire is missing. Instead the text states that the EU demands "an immediate cessation of hostilities, followed by a lasting ceasefire".
The UK and Germany have spoken. The British are known to want to follow the Mideast policies of their ally the United States. Germany, for its part, operates on the basis of its own very complicated logic. The little great power of Europe does not want to irritate Israel (for historical reasons), or the Untied States - for reasons linked with the present day.
For them, a "cessation of hostilities" is more palatable than "ceasefire", which requires an agreement between the parties, and there is a reluctance to pressure Israel in this direction.
At half past five in the afternoon Tuomioja is scheduled to hold a press conference. It is an important moment, because all major international media are on the spot. This gives out the image of Finland as EU President.
"He is quite the leftist, isn't he?" asks an Irish colleague, who is surprised by Tuomioja's repeated statements that are critical of Israel. In his own mind, Tuomioja is in the European mainstream in his views on the Middle East.
Tuomioja gives a convincing performance. He describes the meeting as a success: the EU is capable of speaking with one voice. He does not succumb to his occasional sin of exuding pained haughtiness. He speaks excellent English, and even answers a question put to him in French by Agence France Presse.
But when Tuomioja and Vierros-Villeneuve describe the statement as a success, journalists compare it with the original draft. It is watered down. It does not help to know that first drafts always contain bargaining room.
The Finnish delegation makes it to Finnair flight AY818. When it is still somewhere over Sweden, BBC World is showing a picture of Tuomioja's press conference. The EU statement is cautiously praised. Ultimately, the words "immediate" and "ceasefire" are in the text, even though there are five words between them, the commentator pointedly observes.
AY818 lands in Helsinki at 10:50 PM. Fighting in Lebanon has intensified. Israel is pushing Hezbollah as far away from the border as possible, before diplomacy and its cessations and ceasefires can take hold.
It is 9:15 on Wednesday morning, and a morning meeting is beginning at the Foreign Ministry in the light-blue office of Pilvi-Sisko Vierros-Villeneuve.
Vierros-Villeneuve appears relieved. "We did not believe when we left that a decision would be reached at the meeting", she says. The ministry had been expecting the worst: that all that would have come out of the meeting would have been words delivered by Tuomioja at the press conference.
For diplomats, "an immediate cessation of hostilities" is a diplomatic victory.
Vierros-Villeneuve holds on to the paper. She feels that it makes no difference if it speaks of a ceasefire, or of an end to hostilities. What is most important is the word "immediate" - the desire that the use of arms should end without delay.
Now that the EU has managed to squeeze out a common opinion, the ball moves into the court of the UN Security Council, which - unlike the EU - has the ability to force Israel and Hezbollah into a ceasefire.
A satisfied hum can be heard in the room. Vierros-Villeneuve asks if the others have been following the foreign media. And how is it possible that the Israeli newspaper Haaretz had a news item on its website about the Finnish draft immediately after the beginning of the ministerial lunch?
It becomes apparent that international diplomacy is a team sport, and that each country has its own team.
In the International Herald Tribune the French Minister of Foreign Affairs calls the declaration a "victory of French diplomacy", saying that it is based on a document that France has put forward at the UN.
On the other side of the city, in the main post office building, the Middle East section of the Foreign Ministry keeps on doing what it has been doing for three weeks almost 24 hours a day: following events in the Middle East, and keeping in touch with Finnish embassies in the area. They are constantly being asked what Finland, the holder of the EU Presidency, plans to do next.
The summer holidays of the head of the section, Aapo Pölhö, and Sofie From-Emmesberger have not been held, and neither expect to have any time off for several weeks.
Instead, they are studying such matters as the Sheba farms. "This small area on the Golan Heights could prove to be a significant factor in the solution", Pölhö predicts.
When preparations for the Finnish EU Presidency were being made, the Foreign Ministry tried to plan for all possible contingencies. The previous holder of the Presidency, Austria, was toppled by the dispute over the caricatures of Mohammed. How is it possible to prepare for such an event?
Is the crisis in Darfur going to flare up again? What would happen on the border between Somalia and Ethiopia? Surely, something would take place in the Middle East.
Nevertheless, the Israeli attack on South Lebanon came as a surprise. Pölhö and From-Emmesberger have been watching in confusion at how quickly the events have moved forward.
When From-Emmesberger dropped into Beirut along with Tuomioja, they were faced by a deserted, half-dead city. "It is a completely different Beirut from the one that I visited in the spring."
On Wednesday Hezbollah fires more rockets at Israel than ever before. Israeli soldiers make a commando raid on the city of Baalbek. Tuomioja calls the Prime Minister of Lebanon. Al Jazeera, a popular television channel, interviews the Finnish President in a live broadcast.
"Why doesn't the European Union directly denounce the strikes of Israel, the country that attacked?" President Tarja Halonen is asked.
It is Thursday afternoon in Tuomioja's office. Budget negotiations begin in an hour. Although there is trouble in the Middle East, domestic matters also need to be dealt with.
Tuomioja's mobile telephone rings. "Eki here, hello..." The Foreign Minister slips into a side room. The black shoulder bag is on top of a cupboard behind the desk. It appears to be absolutely full.
In recent days Tuomioja has had to recharge the battery of his mobile phone once a day, although usually it takes four days for it to run low. His subordinates praise him for this: here is a minister who is not afraid to speak on the telephone.
"All doors are open even for a small presidency-holder. In addition, it is in the interests of a small country that nobody should suspect that we would have an agenda of our own that we would be trying to impose on others. This is inevitably the suspicion with large countries", Tuomioja says.
Another advantage is that he is the oldest-serving foreign minister in the EU.
On Monday, the US Ambassador to Finland was sitting in the same room. Tuomioja briefed him on the kind of declaration that Finland was proposing for the EU, and what kind of a paper was likely to come out of the foreign ministers' meeting. "Just like it did."
Now people are waiting for the UN Security Council to come up with a resolution on a ceasefire. "I think that it is realistic to expect it next week", Tuomioja says.
"The situation will not change until the shooting is stopped, most probably through a decision by the UN. That will probably not happen at the drop of a hat."
Even if everything were to go quickly, Lebanon will continue to keep the foreign ministry staffers busy throughout the Finnish EU Presidency. Now the ministry is especially focusing on how humanitarian aid gets delivered, so that there would at least not be any more civilian casualties from aid not getting through.
"There are constant civilian deaths. Rockets fired at Israel hit randomly, mostly affecting civilians. But the war waged by Israel also seems to be such that the civilian population always suffers."
Tuomioja goes through the numbers, which indicate changes in the nature of warfare. Whereas in the First World War, 90 percent of those killed were in uniform, and 10 percent were civilians, in the Second World War the proportion was 50/50. In the Vietnam War 90 percent of the victims were civilians. In Lebanon it is already 98 percent.
Tuomioja turned 60 on July 1st. For years he has carried a small international peace symbol on the lapel of his jacket. Were there any comments about that in the Middle East last week?
"No, every now and then a journalist would say: ‘I like your badge'."
Only one foreign politician has ever commented on it - Swedish Prime Minister Göran Persson, who once told Tuomioja Jasso, du är för fred ("So, you are for peace").
"I answered är vi inte alla då (Aren't we all?)."
Helsingin Sanomat / First published in print 6.8.2006
HEIKKI AITTOKOSKI AND ANU NOUSIAINEN / Helsingin Sanomat
heikki.aittokoski@hs.fi, anu.nousiainen@hs.fi
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| 8.8.2006 - THIS WEEK |
 It's Finland's war too |
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