Diplomacy as the art of speaking to one’s enemies and understanding the world

In March 1991, the Chinese Foreign Minister, Qian Qichen, invited Vattani to China. Vattani discussed this with Andreotti, who gave his approval: ‘My preparatory visit,’ he says, ‘lasted a week. Prime Minister Li Peng, in the wake of the collapse of the Soviet Union, was introducing a number of economic reforms. On 15 September 1991, Giulio Andreotti was received in China with full honours. Andreotti was the first Western leader to re-establish relations with Beijing. Until the Industrial Revolution, China’s development had been similar to that of Great Britain, Belgium and Germany. Then a huge gap emerged. In 1991, China was a major power in rice cultivation and bicycle manufacturing. In Shanghai, Li Peng proudly showed Andreotti and me the ambulances donated by the Italian aid programme. Everything has changed since then.’

Fish is served at the table. We both choose sea bass with potatoes. It’s very good. Vattani recalls: ‘Once the first step had been taken, the Chinese asked to come to Europe, to Italia and Switzerland. In January 1992, Li Peng spent several days in Rome. It wasn’t easy. The President of the Republic, Francesco Cossiga, did not want to receive him. The wound of Tiananmen was still fresh. The mediation with Cossiga took the form of a lunch at the Quirinale, held at the Torrino, the highest point of the hill, though limited to twelve guests. The Chinese, drawing on their millennia of diplomatic wisdom, pretended to accept the explanation that the small number was a sign of respect and distinction.”

The problem of evil in history lies at the heart of diplomatic activity, which constitutes a reality that runs parallel to – and precedes – the political reality. It is helpful that those dealing with these thorny issues are men deeply immersed in the concrete secularity and cultural abstractness of a city like Rome, which Vattani loves almost madly, admiring it from the marvellous terrace of his and his wife Isabella’s home: ‘To understand Rome, Italia and the world, I would advise diplomats – who must hone the art of patience – to read a book published in 2000 by Cardinal Agostino Casaroli: “The Martyrdom of Patience: the Holy See and the Communist Countries 1963–1989”». To tackle these thorny issues, one needs people who are stern to the point of harshness, like Vattani himself: “With the Iranians, following the isolation caused by the Kurdish massacre in Berlin, it was just as complex. In 1997, I was Secretary-General of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. In Tehran, Mohammad Khatami’s reformist leadership had taken office. Foreign Minister Kamal Kharazi had a message sent to me via the embassy in Rome stating that a visit from me to Iran would be welcome. I discussed this with Lamberto Dini, Foreign Minister in Romano Prodi’s government. Dini gave me the go-ahead. In December 1997, I became the first Western diplomat to set foot in Tehran again. The mission was a success. A balanced yet effective approach was adopted. No representative of the Iranian theocracy had ever been invited to Davos, which carried considerable weight in the international balance of power. I mediated with the forum’s organisers myself. I secured an invitation for Foreign Minister Kharazi. And so, Dini and Kharazi met both in Davos and in Zurich. The following year, Dini, as Foreign Minister, and Prodi, as Prime Minister, met President Khatami in Tehran; he reciprocated the visit in 1999 by coming to Italia, thereby re-establishing relations between the European Union and Iran.”

The issue – which was overlooked by the US administration that sparked a bloody and ongoing conflict with Iran – is the central role played by long-term cultural factors in how we view the ‘other’, even when that ‘other’ is an adversary: ‘Iran has followed a theocratic path. But, when I was working with them to re-establish channels of communication with Italia and, by extension, with the European Union, I was well aware of both the small and the big things. Among the small things are cinema, poetry and calligraphy. Among the big things is the perspective of our greatest thinkers: one cannot fail to recall that Montesquieu’s *Persian Letters*, with the two characters Usbek and Rica at the court of the Sun King in France, paint a vast picture not only of them, but also of us.”

In this context, polemology – in the sense of the science that studies war – should – or rather, ought to have – preceded the war itself. ‘In 1983, four years after Khomeini’s return from exile in Paris,’ he points out, ‘the Foreign Office explained to me that the Iranians were curious about nuclear technology. They wanted to enrich uranium using a centrifuge. The British were monitoring the situation alongside the Dutch because, as they explained to me, it was better for the Iranians to do so, so to speak, under their supervision.”

Fresh fruit and espresso arrive. A gentleman – no more than thirty years old – approaches the table: ‘Maestro, I’m off to Hammam in September. I always bear your teachings in mind,’ he says with genuine warmth, not sarcasm. And, amidst the understated solemnity of the Foreign Affairs Club, you realise that in Rome, the culture of the Italian diplomatic corps is much like that of the Bank of Italy and the Council of State – something that exists and enables the country to survive itself, its fragilities and its misdeeds, remaining in the flow of history even when the lines connecting Europe and the United States, the Middle East and Asia are severed, crumble or go up in flames.