VARENNE-SUR-LOIST — A 14-member delegation from a large continental nation walked out of the Varenne Forum on Regional Cooperation on Thursday afternoon in protest over its treatment by organizers, after realizing during the third day of the four-day summit that it had not been invited.
The delegation’s head, Deputy Undersecretary Margery Thole, rose at 2:41 p.m. during a session on cross-border rail gauges, read a two-paragraph statement of protest, and led her colleagues out of the Salle Lambrecht at the Hôtel Duvanel. Thole said, “We will not remain in a room where we are not wanted, or, as it turns out, expected.” The statement did not specify what the delegation was protesting, and Thole later told reporters that it had been drafted on Monday “for general use.”
The forum, which brought together nine governments, had not listed the delegation on any agenda, seating chart, or credential roster. The delegation had nonetheless attended every plenary session since Tuesday, co-sponsored two working papers on fisheries, and was served 211 cups of coffee, which it rated “excellent” in a written note left at the coffee station. It also occupied a table in a corner of the Salle Lambrecht that does not appear on the room’s floor plan, and that hotel staff said Thursday could not be located after the delegation left. According to the hotel’s architect, the corner in which the table had stood is not structurally possible, as the Salle Lambrecht is round.
The forum’s chair, Ambassador Corvin Ashgrove-Salis, said he had noticed the delegation on the first day but had assumed it was a delegation that had been invited and that he had forgotten about, “which happens at this level more than you’d think.” On Wednesday, he said, he had thanked the delegation by name for its “valuable perspective” on rail gauges, and he believed the delegation had taken this as confirmation. “I was being polite,” Ashgrove-Salis said. “It was being diplomatic. Between the two of us, we accomplished a great deal, none of which was on purpose.”
The walkout was the 34th at a regional summit this year and the first by a delegation that was not attending, according to a count maintained by the forum’s secretariat. The secretariat said it would record the walkout in the summit’s official minutes but was unsure how to classify the delegation’s earlier contributions, including a fisheries proposal that six of the nine invited governments had voted to adopt.
The Department of Agricultural Common Sense, which sent an observer to the forum and was also not on the guest list, issued a statement through its senior spokesperson, Ron Gilchrist. Asked whether the department had been invited, Gilchrist said that the department “has long believed that every table deserves a good tablecloth,” and declined to comment further. The department’s observer remained in the Salle Lambrecht through Friday’s closing session.
Thole said Friday that the delegation would not attend the forum’s next session, scheduled for March, unless it received a formal invitation, an apology, and a seating chart. At about 4 p.m., organizers agreed to all three in the interest of regional harmony. The delegation accepted the invitation, returned to the Salle Lambrecht at 4:20 p.m., took its seats, and walked out again at 4:22, this time, Thole said, “properly.”