Romanian Ambassador Participates at Harvard Black Sea Security Program

 April 12-14, 2006

Romanian Ambassador Sorin Ducaru traveled to Boston , Massachusetts from April 12 to April 14, 2006.

On April 13 th , ambassador Ducaru was the luncheon guest speaker at the Harvard Black Sea Security Program

The ambassador discussed with the participants in the program, faculty and students about the “Challenges and Opportunities in the Black Sea”
Four Romanian participants attended the 2006 Harvard Black Sea Security Program including Mr. Claudiu Saftoiu, Counselor to the President of Romania ; Colonel Dan Plavitu, Deputy Head for (operations), Military Intelligence, Brigadier General Tudor Munteanu, Representative of MoND at the Parliament, and Marius Balu, Secretary of State of Ministry of National Defense.

During the trip to Boston , ambassador Ducaru attended a dinner hosted by Dan Dimancescu, Romania 's Honorary Consul to Boston, in honor of Mr. Claudiu Saftoiu, Counselor to the President of Romania.

While at Harvard, ambassador Ducaru also met with Prof. David Ellwood, Dean of the Kennedy School of Government and Ashley Brown, Executive Director, Harvard Electricity Policy Group, Kennedy School of Government, who recently returned from Bucharest where he attended the Black Sea Energy Conference ( A pril 3-5 2006 .)

At the end of the trip, the ambassador met with the Romanian students attending various universities in the Boston area (Harvard, MIT, Tufts. Boston College , Boston University , etc.) to discuss the partnership between the Boston based student organizations and the embassy, exchange programs, cultural events and the most recent developments in Romania .

The Harvard Black Sea Security Program is the first effort of its kind to bring together nations of the region to work together toward common goals. The underlying goal of the Black Sea Regional Security Program is to encourage a regional security system based on cooperation and integration.

In bringing the nations of the region together, the Program aims to: assist key policymakers in the nations in the Black Sea region to understand more fully the new framework of security and economic relationships emerging in the region, identify common issues in these security and economic relationships, and to foster cooperation on them, assist the Black Sea nations as they move toward restructuring their armed forces to reflect more accurately these new geopolitical realities, and finally, work with these countries to find new areas of agreement and cooperation with the United States, and, at the same time, to enhance the understanding of senior U.S. policymakers of the new strategic architecture of the Black Sea region.