Karel Kovanda

Karel Kovanda    ( diplomat)
Born	5 October 1944  Gilsland,  Great Britain
Nationality	•  Czech •  US? (Born:  Czechoslovak)
Alma mater	•  Czech University of Agriculture in Prague •  MIT •  Pepperdine University
Member of	Covington & Burling
very pro-Transatlantic senior Czech diplomat who attended Bilderberg/1998.  Czechia/Ambassador/NATO In office 1998 - 2005  Czechia/Deputy Foreign Minister In office 1997 - 1998 led the accession negotiations to NATO.  Czechia/Ambassador/United Nations In office 1993 - 1997

Karel Kovanda is a former Czech diplomat. An exile in the United States after the 1968 Prague Spring and Soviet military clampdown, he returned after the "Velvet Revolution" in 1989 to take high-ranking positions in Czech diplomacy, including Ambassador to the United Nations and NATO. He was selected to attend the 1998 Bilderberg conference, and believes that US and the Czech Republic share common goals when it comes to foreign policy.

Education

He graduated from the University of Agriculture in Prague (1969). In November 1968 he was the chairman of the Action Committee of Prague students, which led the student strike, in the spring of 1969 he was elected chairman of the Union of university students of Bohemia and Moravia. In 1970 he emigrated to the United States.

There he studied Political Science, in 1975 he received his doctorate at MIT.

Career

From 1975 to 1977, he taught Political Science in Southern California, and from 1977 to 1979, he worked as a language specialist at Radio Beijing. In 1985, he completed an MBA at Pepperdine University in California, and in the 1980s he was a manager in the private sector. He was also a freelance journalist, translator and interpreter.

After November 1989, he returned to Czechoslovakia in 1990 and joined the civil service. In 1991-93 was the head of administration at the Ministry of foreign affairs of Czechoslovakia.

After the division of the country, in 1993, he was the political director of the Czech Foreign Ministry, responsible for relations with Europe and North America. From 1993 to 1997 he was ambassador of the Czech Republic to the United Nations, where in 1994 and 1995 he represented the Czech Republic in the Security Council. He was president of the United Nations economic and Social Council in 1997. In 2010, he was awarded the Umurinzi medal by Rwandan president Paul Kagame.

In 1997-98 he was deputy foreign minister (in the second Václav Klaus government), as such he led the accession negotiations to NATO. From 1998 to 2005 he was ambassador of the Czech Republic to NATO.

According to a US diplomatic cable, During the attack on Yugoslavia "Kovanda got into hot water in April, 1999 when, as the Czech Ambassador to NATO, he criticized members of his own government for not supporting the NATO air strikes in Yugoslavia. Current President Vaclav Klaus was then head of the Chamber of Deputies, the main legislative body, and voiced strong reservations about the NATO actions. Kovanda's statements led to charges that he was disloyal and even to calls for his dismissal." The cable also said that he "At a NATO event in Colorado Springs in 2003, showed his own idealism when he refused to have anything to do with the Russian delegation. He left the facility for a walk in the hills in order to avoid meeting the Russians."

In 2003 he said that:

Criticism that unintentionally undermines the US position in the world? Let's point out these consequences and try to finesse our views more carefully. Challenging the very position of the US in the world, with the deliberate intention of subverting it? I don't think so!.. We are all for the further development of European military capacities. Our own contribution is there as well. Unlike some others in Europe, we do spend 2% GDP or so on defence. Domestically, we have embarked on a very difficult military reform which within two or three years will dramatically downsize our armed forces, professionalize them, make them more mobile, more expeditionary, more useful for the current requirements of warfare- which, take note, greatly overlap between NATO and the EU.

Since April 2005, he was Deputy Director-General for Foreign Relations at the European Commission, where he was responsible for multilateral relations of the European Union with North America, East Asia, Australia, New Zealand and the states of the European Economic Area (Norway, Iceland and Liechtenstein), relations with multilateral organizations such as the UN or OSCE and for the concept of the common foreign, security and defense policy of the EU.

Since his retirement, Kovanda has worked as a consultant in Brussels.

 

Events Participated in

Event	Start	End	Location(s)	Description
Bilderberg/1998	14 May 1998	17 May 1998	Scotland Turnberry	The 46th Bilderberg meeting, held in Scotland, chaired by Peter Carrington
Brussels Forum/2007	2007	2007	Belgium Brussels	2007 get-together of transatlantic politicians, media and military and corporations, under the auspices of the CIA and NATO-close German Marshall Fund.

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