POLLYWOOD | EMBASSY ROW
Supporting France Rare presidential visits to embassies; Lafayette, eat your heart out BY ROLAND FLAMINI
Christine Lagarde, managing director of the International Monetary Fund, sports a “Je suis Charlie” sign on her back at the Jan. 11 Washington, D.C. march decrying recent terrorist acts in Paris. (French Embassy Photo)
REMEMBERING A TRAGIC WEEK I: The march in Washington following France’s time of troubles drew 3,500 participants. “We wanted to give the French of the region, and a lot of Americans who also marched, the opportunity to show in a very simple way their solidarity,” said French Amb. Gérard Araud, who led the march along with envoys from Italy, Hungary, Lithuania, Ukraine and the European Union. “It’s really frustrating when you are living abroad and your country is under attack,” he said, gratified there were similar demonstrations of solidarity in 20 other American cities. Also marching was Christine Lagarde, managing director of the International Monetary Fund, who had an “I Am Charlie” flyer pinned to her back. “I suppose I should have walked backward,” she mused after the hour-long demonstration. REMEMBERING A TRAGIC WEEK II: As in Paris, there was no senior representative from the White House at the march. Isn’t that what U.S. vicepresidents are for? Perhaps the White House felt
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President Obama’s unannounced visit to the
Embassy of France earlier in the week was sufficient as an expression of American solidarity. Spokesman Arnaud Guillois said that as far as his embassy was concerned, the president’s visit was “unprecedented.” In fact, the president of the United States rarely visits Washington embassies because they are extra-territorial and he would be, in effect, setting foot in a foreign country. The few known exceptions are the 2004 visit to the embassy of Spain by President George W. Bush in similar circumstances, following the Madrid terrorist train bombings; his earlier appearance at the embassy of Afghanistan to mark the re-opening of the diplomatic mission in the latter part of 2001; and a visit to the British Residence for a dinner hosted by Queen Elizabeth II in 2007. In the 1980s, President Ronald Reagan dined at the Embassy of Italy. BETTER LATE THAN NEVER DEPARTMENT: The Marquis de Lafayette was an unabashed self-publicist who managed to upstage the other distinguished
foreign soldiers who fought in the American Revolution. Among those he elbowed to the sidelines are the Comte de Rochambeau, the French strategist who subdued Yorktown, and Spain’s Gen. Bernardo de Galvez. General who? De Galvez was at the center of the Spanish effort to support the Americans. “He furnished badly needed munitions, money and supplies to American troops in the Western theater,” says maritime historian Larrie D. Ferreiro, who is writing a book about Spain’s role in the War of Independence. Galvez, Ferreiro notes, also led a Spanish army that wrested Florida from King George III’s troops. So, in 1793, the U.S. Congress, in recognition of Galvez’s role, resolved to hang his portrait in an appropriate place. Two hundred twenty-one years later, Congress got around to doing just that. In December, following private efforts backed by lobbying by the Embassy of Spain, de Galvez’s portrait was installed in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing room, and both houses voted to grant de Galvez honorary U.S. citizenship, an extremely rare distinction.
Sen. Bob Menendez (D-N.J.) speaks at the dedication of the portrait of Gen. Bernardo de Galvez in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee Hearing Room as Spanish Amb. Ramon Gil-Casares looks on. (EFE Agency Photo)
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