Embassy in One of Saddam Hussein’s Villa

Marble bathrooms, a palm tree that goes through the roof. A 6,000 square meter garden surrounded by waters that host wild ducks, lightened by headlights hidden at the base of the bushes. This is how the foreign Presidents who visited Saddam Hussein were treated. Now, the Romanian embassy in Iraq has moved in the villa in Bagdad.

LUXURIOUS

The Romanian officials in Bagdad can relax while watching the wild ducks playing on the lake.

The Romanian embassy in Iraq has moved from a block situated in one of the most explosive zones of Bagdad in Saddam Hussein’s residential neighbourhood, in the present Green Area. It is placed in the guests’ house of the former Iraqi dictator, where he used to house the state chiefs who visited his country. A luxurious villa surrounded 6,000 square meters, a small lake with footbridges and pontoons used by the wild ducks to get out of the lake. At night, the entire park is lightened by headlights hidden in the bushes. A palm tree squeezed a branch through the building’s roof, and used its other branch to cover the entire building.

NEW HOUSE

The move, which started in May, is the work of the Romania’s special emissary in Bagdad, Simona Marinescu. At the end of her mandate, she showed Paul Bremer and the Iraqi governors that the Romanian embassy couldn’t be placed in a private insecure block anymore. "The location has been given to us following an agreement between the Coalition and the Iraqi Government, free for now. We used to pay 250,000 yearly for the other location", explains Simona Marinescu.

OFFER

However, neither Poland, nor Portugal, countries that have numerous troops in Iraq, were able to move in the International Zone. But Simona Marinescu fell in love with the garden that surrounds the villa and put the Romanian "flag" there. "Some other locations have been offered to us as well. We also hold property deeds for another location, right next to M16, the British secret service. There was another location offered to us: it was on a very large terrain, it had five smaller buildings, but it couldn’t be modified in any way, since it was part of the Iraqi patrimony. Here, we have already started building because the people taking care of the security have to be hosted as well etc.", says Simona Marinescu, the former special governmental emissary.

LETTER

Nevertheless, Simona Marinescu won’t have an office in the headquarters struck through by a palm tree. Recently, Simona Marinescu has been working for the World Bank, also in the social politics area, but with a much wider segment to cover: Middle East and North Africa. When she leaves for work she has to choose from Amman and Washington. In Bagdad, she is a representative of the Brittish Government with which she cooperates in Iraqi poverty fighting issues. With her new status, Simona Marinescu said Good-Bye to the senator mandate and to any other place on the lists for the incoming parliamentary elections. She sent a letter to her colleagues in the Senate through which she makes available the diploma received from the Defence American Secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, for her mandate in Iraq. This way she made participants to the received merits, even though, when she left, most of them "encouraged" her with the question "Simona, do you go there to die?". In the same letter Marinescu announces her parliamentary colleagues about her giving up on being a candidate for these elections as well.