The presidential machines were wrong again by trying to kneel down in front of the sultan and by putting the President in embarrassing shoes: he was asked to explain how come no one had demanded him to pay the surprise visits to the Black Sea states. He had to say, which is premier in the European diplomacy archive, that he had had no mandate from NATO, EU or the Americans. He said he had paid those visits on behalf of Romania's interests, as normal. He explained he had proposed that Romania should provide expertise for the talks, at times when the slow and indeterminate response of European institutions had to be made up for by the idea of direct talks between the conflicting states, an idea never expressed clearly in the West capital cities. On the other hand, the embarrassing suppositions belonging to the presidential admirers have once again asked a very problematic question, covering an embarrassing truth: why is there no one to set Romania a task and ask it to participate in the team of negotiators on conflicts, especially at times when Romania's interest are intertwined with the EU and NATO ones? This is the very saddening state of things: Romania's opinion on the Georgian conflict hasn't even been asked for and Romania has failed to be invited to join one of the multiple political missions urgently sent there. But would Romania have had the right to? Morally speaking, it would. Politically speaking, it would have had the right to, had Romania proved able to take advantage of at least one of the multiple institutional means available. In a previous editorial I was mentioning the lot of Black Sea forums and organizations with Romania in charge of the catering, events there has been no talk about these weeks. Romania would have had a different solution: the president of the Parliament of Europe assigned a mission coordinated by the head of the Delegation for the Relations with the South Caucasus States. Marian-Jean Marinescu, a vice president of the EPP group, is part of this structure. He did not go there, so we missed the opportunity to make at least our presence felt there, since we are no good at talking. The mission yielded and the outcome was announced during the emergency reunion of the Foreign Affairs Committee in the Parliament of Europe. Our MEPs could have spoken about the Romanian President's initiative. Roberta Anastase and Marian Zlotean did not speak up, choosing instead to misinform the Romanian press in a petty manner. Their colleagues, members of the committees gathering together, just played truant: Adrian Severin, Ioan Mircea Pascu, Marian Jean Marinescu, Cristian Busoi, Rovana Plumb. I don't know whether they did to discredit Traian Basescu's own mission or not. It may be so. Maybe they did it just out of their usual foolishness and incompetence, hopeful no one would notice. But here we can see that no Romanian is talking about what Romania is doing. Then how can we hope international organizations will notice us? Such thingfs are not to be done by press releases and analyses released after the events and not read by anyone, but just archived. The situation calls for measures and attitudes taken in due time. We are unable to capitalize our advantages at times when such moves are being planned. The OSCE is an example. If you remember, we claimed our stance was an exception. Had it been so, at least some military observers from Romania would have been invited to be in the first 20-member team, sent there last week, in the company of A. Stubb, a president of the organization... What we are in the habit of doing instead is complain that Romania is represented in no group of negotiators for Transdniestria, whereas the EU high representative comes from Hungary, a country greatly interested in the Black Sea.

Cristian UNTEANU