The US Embassy organized the July 4 reception in Bucharest

Several hundred people attended last Friday the 2016 Independence Day Reception that was organized by the US Embassy in Romania.

As the fourth of July is today, the organizers held the event at the end of last week, so public officials would have no problem attending the reception.

Among the key guests, there were president Klaus Iohannis, PM Dacian Ciolos, the heads of the main political parties in the country, but also representatives from the judiciary, such as the chief prosecutor of the National Anticorruption Directorate (DNA), Laura Codruta Kovesi, and the head of the Directorate for the Investigation of Organized Crime and Terrorism (DIICOT), Daniel Horodniceanu.

The director of the domestic intelligence services SRI, Eduard Hellvig, was also among the participants, alongside the head of the foreign intelligence service SIE, Mihai Razvan Ungureanu.

“This year America also celebrates the 100th anniversary of the establishment of the National Park Service. Like many great ideas, the National Park System in the United States developed over time, with many contributions, and continues to evolve. Its roots began more than 150 years ago, in the midst of the American Civil War, when President Lincoln signed into law the protection of the land now known as Yosemite National Park, in order for it to ‘be used and preserved for the benefit of mankind, to be held for public use, resort, and recreation…inalienable for all time.’ During his presidency, Theodore Roosevelt aggressively set aside land throughout the nation, land that eventually became national parks, national forests, national monuments, and preserves. As a result of this expansion, America needed an organization to administer these federally-protected areas. For that purpose, in 1916, President Woodrow Wilson created the National Park Service. Presidents ever since have established new protected areas, including President Obama, who oversaw the opening of seven new national parks in 2015, and inaugurated the newest park just last month. President Obama’s objective in creating these new parks was the same as President Wilson’s, ‘to conserve the scenery and the natural and historic objects and the wildlife therein, and to leave them unimpaired for the enjoyment of future generations’”, said the US Ambassador to Romania, Hans Klemm.

Both Klemm and Iohannis have underlined in their speeches the idea of further strengthening the strategic partnership between the US and Romania, which covers the military, political and economic spectrums.

Ovidiu Posirca