A politician from ‘top to toe’

Date: 16/11/1995

IT is rare to find a politician that everybody loves, but if he exists it is surely Spanish Foreign Minister Javier Solana Madariaga.

In the coming weeks, Solana will be firmly in the spotlight as his country's EU presidency draws to a close. After hosting a key reunion of foreign ministers of 27 nations of the EU, North Africa and the Middle East in Barcelona at the end of this month, he will then play a key role at the Madrid summit of EU leaders in mid-December.

Solana is also being tipped as a possible compromise candidate for the post of NATO secretary-general, a measure of the esteem in which he is held.

Often referred to as a 'pedigree Socialist', Solana inherited the passions that brought him onto the European stage from his 'great uncle' Salvador de Madariaga, who was devoted to the causes of diplomacy and European integration and wrote prolifically in favour of a European Community between the two world wars.

Solana's loyalty to Spanish Prime Minister Felipe Gonzalez is unwavering and he is seen as the premier's dauphin.

In the late 1960s, when Gonzalez arrived in Madrid with a group of Socialists from Seville, Madrid's establishment looked down on the socially unsophisticated 'Sevillanos'. Solana's family was the only one of Madrid's established bourgeois intellectual families to welcome them. Gonzalez stayed often in Solana's house and the two men formed a close friendship.

During the first years of democracy, Solana was a bridge between Socialists and Basque separatists until they earned autonomy in 1980, and was a uniting influence for the disparate Socialist factions. Many credit him for creating the Socialist party as it is today. According to people who know him, Solana is devoted to the party. One friend said: “His fervour for the Socialist party is almost religious.”

Trained as a physicist, Solana considered his tenure as a physics professor at Madrid University as a profession, but he looks on politics as a vocation. “He is totally dedicated to politics,” said the friend.

Still, the scientist in him shows. Nicely dressed, but not as natty as many in the diplomatic circles in which he travels, Solana is more comfortable dressing in the style of the ex-professor that he is. His somewhat scruffy beard dates from his student days, when a demanding science curriculum made shaving difficult.

Friends and colleagues describe him as “austere”, almost miserly, about his clothes. When Solana boasted about the bargain he had got on a tie in a department store, a colleague asked him why he had not bought several. “One is enough,” was the response.

Solana still follows advances in physics through scientific journals and close contact with his former pupils. If he has a moment's leisure, the former academic can be found with his head buried in a book. Even his daughter's name reflects his love of science - she is called Vega, after the furthest star in a constellation.

“The pleasure of discovery is greater than any other,” says the author of a hundred scientific essays. “I was happy as a researcher.”

His indefatigable optimism often makes Solana the butt of jokes. Journalists tease him because he opens press conferences with the words “I have good news for you.” “Even in the deepest Bosnia crisis he said that,” one journalist said. “He always finds the good part.”

An athletic swimmer, runner and tennis player, Solana's aides have a hard time keeping up.

“He never stops,” said one. “You have to be alert. He's always full of ideas - he has more in his mind than we can do. He's so nice, but you can never relax until you get back on the plane.”

Of high-level politicians, Solana is one of the most approachable. After long meetings of ministers, he often spends hours sitting with journalists holding long, deep political discussions. He also keeps up with his friends. “We would need 48-hour days to attend to everybody,” the aide said. “He loves to be surrounded by people.”

Solana does occasionally acknowledge that there are disadvantages to being foreign minister. For instance, hotels cannot always provide his favourite breakfast - bread with olive oil and sugar. Not a devotee of gourmet cooking, Solana prefers home-cooked staples like potatoes and lentils, but accompanied by good wines of which he is a connoisseur. He smokes cigars non-stop and spends hours pouring over his collection of maps.

Colleagues and journalists say he still behaves like an academic. “He explains things like an old professor,” said a Madrid-based journalist who follows the foreign minister. Aides say his scientific mind shows in the way he directs debate and processes the information his advisors give him.

“He listens, he gets the point quickly, and then he explains it better than they did. He's really still a teacher,” said one aide, adding: “But deep down, from top to toe, he's a politician.”

That sometimes gives diplomats in his foreign service grey hairs, as he charges ahead with political initiatives that they find too risky, as when he pushed for relations with Cuba before diplomats found it safe. “We emphasise the risks, while he takes them. He has seen much further, he leads, and in the end we find the way,” one said.

It was Solana who pushed his country to send troops to Bosnia, convinced of the importance of having a presence there.

Solana's EU counterparts also compliment him. Irish Foreign Minister Dick Spring praises his seriousness and his capability as a leader at foreign ministers' tables. It is clear that Solana likes that role, although some say he tries too often to go it alone, making mistakes when he does not let advisors brief the press on tricky issues. It is, for example, rare to see Spain's European Affairs Minister Carlos Westendorp on stage if Solana is there.

But his affable nature wins him many friends in political circles.

When in Moscow on business, he always meets Russian Foreign Minister Andrei Kozyrev for a set of tennis. Kozyrev has picked up some Spanish through his friendship with Solana, enough to open his remarks in Spanish during the signature of the EU-Russia interim accord in July. Solana has not yet learned Russian, but his French is excellent as is his English - a result of years as a Fulbright scholar at American universities.

Solana's name is increasingly being talked about as a candidate for NATO secretary-general, a post he has repeatedly said he did not want, but now appears to be warming to. Many point out that he is likely to be out of a job next year if, as expected, Gonzalez falls from power.

It would be ironic if he does become the alliance leader. Before the Socialists took power in 1982, Solana was frequently seen leading anti-NATO demonstrations in Madrid's public squares. They wanted Spain out of the alliance and demanded a public referendum on the issue.

By the time the referendum was organised, however, Gonzalez and Solana were the sitting government and had to support Spain's position in the alliance. They were forced to lead the 'Yes' campaign. The experience left both men shaken. When Gonzalez was asked to hold another plebiscite on the Maastricht Treaty, he vowed: “Never again.”

But Solana might win approval from Washington, where he impressed Bill Clinton with a conversation the US president recounted later. With noisy protesters demonstrating outside the White House, Clinton asked the foreign minister whether he found physics or politics more difficult, to which Solana replied quickly: “There's no doubt - politics. In physics, you work with numbers, and they don't shout.”