The American Ambassador Is Criticized in Romania, While Defended in the US

With his mandate due to end soon, the US Ambassador to Romania, Michael Guest, still sparks controversies.

The scandal stirred by the allegations in the Bucharest Business Week (TR. NOTE: BBW, www.bbw.ro, is an English language weekly edited by Irish-born Sean Hillen) and the subsequent statements of President Ion Iliescu and of the Department of State made it into the American media.
The on-line publication Washington Blade Online gives the details of a year full of events for the US Ambassador in Bucharest, Michael Guest.

Both the Department of State and the Romanian President had a firm stance regarding the campaign conducted by BBW against Guest, informs the American publication. Both governments expressed their support for the diplomat in Bucharest.

A Department of State representative denied allegations in BBW, that Guest was called back from his position in Romania due to "irregularities" at the embassy there. Margo Squire said that Guest "did an excellent job as a US Ambassador to Romania" and that the diplomat will end his three-year mandate this month and return to Washington to be given new assignments in the US diplomatic service.

The Romanian President, for his part, awarded Guest, on June 24th, the Order for Faithful Service, in cross-ranking, as a sign "of appreciation for his high professionalism and for his personal contribution to the Romanian-American partnership."

The BBW carried for more than a year a media campaign against Guest, alleging his meddling into Romanian domestic affairs. Some of the issues raised in this context by BBW were the scandal surrounding the arrest (TR. NOTE: on pedophile and pornographic charges) of the American historian Kurt Treptow, and the one regarding the illegal adoption abroad of Romanian children. Tom Coleman, president of the "Homosexuals and lesbians in external affairs," says that the anti-Guest campaign had been fueled by anti-gay prejudice. Another explanation, he thinks, might be that the editor of BBW, (TR. NOTE: Sean Hillen), was denied the position of Romania director of the Fulbright Foundation, (TR. NOTE: in charge with dispensing scholarships to American and Romanian scholars).