The Diplomat
Foreign Minister Arancha González Laya did not have a comfortable press conference on Tuesday in the company of her Croatian counterpart, Gordan Grlic Radman, because the journalists’ questions revolved around three controversial issues that affect her department and for which she did not give very clear explanations.
One was the issue of vaccination of staff abroad, which has provoked the unity of trade unions to call for satisfactory measures. Another was the diplomatic incident with Morocco, provoked by the government’s decision to host Polisario Front leader Brahim Ghali in a hospital without first informing Rabat.
On the latter issue, and the unease expressed by the Moroccan authorities, the minister, visibly annoyed, avoided answering two questions from journalists, claiming that she had already spoken about the matter and that what she had to say she would say to the Moroccan government and not through the press.
The third question was the decision, reported by The Diplomat, to dismiss the consul general in Jerusalem, Ignacio García-Valdecasas, in the midst of the Israeli-Palestinian crisis and with a Spanish member of an NGO in Palestine accused before an Israeli military judge of belonging to an illegal organisation.
The minister refused to explain the reasons for the dismissal of the consul, who acts as an “unofficial ambassador” to Palestine, and limited herself to assuring that it was not “a decision taken lightly”. “All the established procedures have been followed” within the framework of the ministry’s internal operating rules, she said, and insisted that dismissals are not decisions that are “arbitrary or taken lightly, but are taken when they have to be taken”.
González Laya argued that in this type of case “we try to maintain discretion because that is what we are obliged to do by the Ministry’s rules of ethics”. Hours earlier, sources from his Department had told Europa Press that the Consulate in Jerusalem is a freely appointed post and that whoever occupies it “must maintain suitability at all times, a condition that in this case has ceased to be fulfilled”.
According to The Diplomat, the decision was taken after an internal investigation, which accepted the accusations of mistreatment made against García-Valdecasas by several employees of the consular representation, which he rejects.
Although the minister said at the press conference that García-Valdecasas “still has a month to stay in his place of posting”, and that “there are two deputy consuls who attend to the needs of the Spanish community”, the reality is that the consul left his post on Monday afternoon when he was informed of his dismissal and is no longer in the post, but has begun to pack up his things and say goodbye, although he has a month to return to the Ministry in Madrid.ç
González Laya confirmed that “shortly” a process will begin to fill the vacancy left by García-Valdecasas’ dismissal.
