US ambassador calls it a day

Mercer Reynolds said business commitments were pulling him back to the US Keystone

The United States ambassador to Switzerland, Mercer Reynolds, has announced he will be leaving Bern at the end of March after just 18 months in the job.

His unexpected departure has prompted media speculation that he is returning to the US to help in President Bush’s re-election campaign.

Reynolds told swissinfo this was not the case. “I have a lot of business obligations and I need to get back home,” he said.

But Reynolds admits that he had planned to stay until the end of the year.

“I’m sad to be leaving and it’s premature obviously as I had hoped to be here for the presidential visit [in June] that would have culminated my career here.”

The Swiss press has speculated that the long-time Bush friend and former business partner was being recalled ahead of next year’s US presidential election.

Political ties

Reynolds took over from his predecessor, Richard Fredericks, on September 11, 2001 – the same day as the attacks on New York’s Twin Towers and the Pentagon in Washington.

Bern was his first diplomatic posting – he came from a purely business background. But he says the transition has not been a difficult one, insisting that his experience in the business world has helped him during his time in Switzerland.

“It is just management,” he said. “You’re managing a different type of business – this happens to be the business of diplomacy.”

While business ties between Switzerland and the US have always been strong – last year Switzerland was one of the largest investors in the US – Reynolds says he has been keen to raise the level of diplomatic links between the two countries.

And he sees that as characterising his tenure of office in Bern.

“When I arrived I felt that the business ties between our two countries were fantastic,” he told swissinfo. “But the diplomatic ties – the government ties – really needed to be improved now that Switzerland is on the world stage since joining the United Nations.”

Presidential visit

He says cooperation on a government basis has reached new levels with over a dozen high level US cabinet visits during the past 18 months, culminating with the bilateral meeting of Bush and the Swiss president, Pascal Couchepin, later this year.

“It’ll be more than a handshake,” Reynolds said. “It will be a genuine discussion about how Switzerland and the US could move together and expand their bilateral cooperation on a president to president basis.”

The June visit, he says, is a mark of respect for the support Switzerland has given the US administration in the fight against terrorism.

Avoiding war

Those feelings of respect, says Reynolds, extend to Switzerland’s policy of neutrality. Although there has been strong public opposition in Switzerland to a possible war in Iraq, the US ambassador says that is part of the democratic process with the right to free speech and the right to protest.

He says he has felt no animosity or ill feeling towards himself or the US in Bern over the past 18 months, and he insists war can still be avoided.

“I don’t think anyone is for war and certainly the US is not for war,” he maintains. “Actually, we want peace – we want Saddam to disarm and to disarm immediately and openly.

“If he does that then there will be no war in Iraq.”

swissinfo, Jonathan Summerton

Reynolds summary

Mercer Reynolds took over from Richard Fredericks as US ambassador to Bern in September 2001.
During the 2000 presidential election campaign, Reynolds was co-finance chair in Ohio for the Bush/Cheney campaign.
In 1979, together with his business partner, William DeWitt, Reynolds founded Reynolds DeWitt and Co – an investment firm based in Cincinnati, Ohio.
Reynolds helped head Bush’s Presidential Inauguration Committee – raising $40 million for the four-day celebration.