Word: consulant
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...lushly flowered city of Guadalajara has long been considered a prize post by American diplomats: the climate seems like eternal spring, the ambience is relaxed and the U.S. consul general's home is a monument to comfortable living. From now on, though, Foreign Service officers may be a bit apprehensive about the assignment. Two weeks ago, while returning home from a local police exhibition on law enforcement, U.S. Consul General Terrance Leonhardy (a 21-year career man) was kidnaped by four armed men. An hour after he was spirited away, ransom notes turned up, demanding on behalf...
Although Washington stood firm, Mexican President Luis Echeverría decided to bow to the demands. "Mexico will accede," he said, "because the essential thing is to protect the U.S. consul general's life." (Only six months before, five Mexican guerrillas were released from prison after their comrades hijacked a domestic Mexicana airline flight and demanded that all be allowed to fly to Cuba.) Besides, as a Mexican official put it, "allowing the terrorists to kill the consul general would have been tragic for U.S.-Mexican relations. It would have cost Mexico dearly in American investment...
...those reasons soon become clear. The film moves from Santore's funeral back a week to the day in which Santore and the Brazilian consul to Uruguay were kidnapped by the Tupamaros. The Tupamaros operate with both efficiency and care. They brandish guns but don't use them. The "expropriate" cars and their owners for their operations, but leave the owners unharmed and deposit the cars scattered over the city when they no longer need them. They make it clear that they will kill if necessary but they are also smart enough to realize that their ends are not served...
Other such dramas have occurred recently, including the 1970 murder of the West German ambassador, Count Karl von Spreti, by Guatemalan guerrillas. Over the past five years, eight U.S. diplomats and embassy officials have been involved in kidnaping incidents. In January, Ambassador to Haiti Clinton Knox and Consul Ward Christensen were seized at gunpoint and released only after the Haitian government paid a ransom of $70,000 and freed twelve political prisoners...
...remained in the plane's tanks. On the ground, the Arabs were adamant that the 727 be refueled for the flight to Libya, and announced that plane and occupants would be blown up unless it was done. Unable to contact his foreign office, Kurt Laqueur, Bonn's consul general in Zagreb, agreed to the refueling. "I didn't want to play with the lives of the passengers," he explained later...