Helene Fouquet writes about another lady in Minsk. Just two women were at the table as the cease-fire between Russian-backed rebels in Ukraine and the government in Kiev was hammered out. German Chancellor Angela Merkel was one. The other was Heidi Tagliavini.
The discreet, 65-year-old Swiss diplomat worked alongside Merkel, Russia’s Vladimir Putin, France’s Francois Hollande and Ukraine’s Petro Poroshenko on the deal to stem the conflict that has devastated eastern Ukraine.
In the “Green Room” of the vast marble-and-glass Independence Palace in the Belarusian capital, Minsk, Tagliavini helped stave off a collapse late in the talks, according to officials who were there. As someone Putin has long felt he could trust, diplomats say, she was able to silence a contingent of separatists who wanted to see the whole deal reworked.
A special envoy for the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, Tagliavini is known among other diplomats as “the facilitator.” She is the only woman in the six-member Trilateral Contact Group that has brought together the Ukrainians, Russians and separatists.
Tagliavini has spent much of the past three decades in postings across eastern Europe brokering peace and monitoring wars and elections for the OSCE, the European Union, and the United Nations. She has served at the Swiss embassy in Moscow and on missions in Chechnya, Ukraine and Georgia, always employing a quiet style and Helvetic neutrality that has helped her win the confidence of leaders from all sides
As the group reached possible common ground on each issue, the points of agreement were sent to leaders’ entourages gathering about three miles away in the Independence Palace. By Thursday morning, they had a structure for the cease-fire and rushed to the Palace to present it to the leaders. When the rebels balked at the last minute, Tagliavini shuttled between the various groups to prevent the talks from collapsing. At noon, Putin emerged from the conference room and confirmed the cease-fire to reporters.
Switzerland in January handed over the rotating presidency of the OSCE to Serbia, but Tagliavini kept her role at the head of the Contact Group — a sign of the confidence members of the group have in her, according to a senior European diplomat.
With close-cropped blond hair, rimless glasses, and always wearing a brightly-colored scarf around her neck, Tagliavini is known by politicians across eastern Europe as “the link,” for her ability to keep parties in talks when tensions start to rise, a Swiss diplomat said.
Taliavini has a PhD in philology, the study of language from historical sources. It’s her ability to understand languages and the cultural background of people in the region that has helped her navigate the tricky world of east European politics, a French diplomat said.
In a rare interview, with the Swiss Broadcasting Corporation, Tagliavini described her work as “offering warring parties a space to discuss a possible peace agreement, seeing to it that they talk to each other, trying to re-establish an element of trust, making proposals, monitoring human rights and rights of refuges and the state of law.”
