Foreign Envoys May N.Y., but the Feeling Isn’t Always Mutual : Diplomats: When the host city and its guests conflict, one woman is responsible for smoothing the waters.

Mayor Ed Koch, told that Mikhail S. Gorbachev and his wife, Raisa, were coming for a visit, said: “Great. Invite them to dinner. I’ll take them to my favorite Chinese restaurant.”

Although the reaction says something about the mayor’s natural exuberance, it also says a great deal about this polyglot city that is host to the world’s largest diplomatic corps, about 40,000 men, women and children from widely divergent cultures. They staff 159 missions to the United Nations and 87 consulates.

If it’s not easy living with 8 million New Yorkers, it’s no piece of cake for the New Yorkers either.

Many of these guests live within the sometimes shelter of diplomatic immunity. Their various embassies are considered foreign territory, immune from New York’s police force and city inspectors, as is the United Nations itself. And their 1,000 cars have special areas to park, one of their privileges, which doesn’t stop them from parking illegally almost anywhere they choose.

Last year, 65,000 parking violations were issued to cars with diplomatic plates, down from 154,000 a decade earlier, an indication of better cooperation.

The Vienna Convention does specify that the diplomats should respect the laws of the host country. So diplomatic vehicles can be towed away by the city if they threaten health and safety, but unlike everyday New Yorkers, the erring diplomat can retrieve his or her car without cost in most circumstances.

The city concedes that there is not enough diplomatic parking space. Fifty-five missions and consulates don’t have any. But it is the one battlefield where the host New Yorkers and their guests cross bayonets.

Not long ago, the Mexican ambassador pulled up to his designated diplomatic parking spot in front of his residence just as a New Yorker was backing into it. The ambassador asked him to move and he wouldn’t. It heated up from there. Finally, the ambassador pulled a gun and won back his parking place.

The person who adjudicates, mediates and calms the angry waters is Gillian Martin Sorensen, head of the city’s Commission for the United Nations and Consular Corps. She is the wife of Ted Sorensen, a New York attorney who served in President John F. Kennedy’s White House.

Their home phone rings at all hours of the night. The diplomatic 911 number seems to be “Call Gillian.”

“Not that it happens every night, because it doesn’t,” she said. “But it still makes me jump because I know if they’re calling at that hour, it’s important. They know someone will respond.”

It can be anything--including a bomb threat, a diplomatic suicide, a runaway child or a heart attack. “The daughter of the Indian ambassador died the other day of an asthma attack in a matter of minutes,” she said.

“If it’s a towed car, we let it wait until morning.”

For her, it is an obvious labor of love. “I learned how deeply diplomats care about their work,” she said. “I learned how the image of diplomats as high-living, socializing, striped-pants types is far from the truth.”

As commissioner, she is a sometimes housemother to people who are far from home, in an alien environment and vulnerable.

They have their share of stolen cars, stolen car radios, even stolen license plates. A car belonging to Bangladesh was hijacked at knifepoint in October. Sorensen points out that the red, white and blue diplomatic plates make them highly visible.

To counteract this, one diplomat put an “I love New York,” sticker on his bumper. So she made them available to any embassy or consulate that wanted them. China, Haiti, India, Jordan, the Holy See and Hungary were among the first to order. Hundreds went out.

New York is not an easy environment.

During the telephone strike, there were about 80 calls from diplomats who couldn’t get their phones installed and were out of communication with their home governments.

Sorensen said she and her staff of 14 “were able on a selective and emergency basis to get their phones hooked up.”

Then there was the time a water main burst and flooded the Bulgarian Embassy’s basement, where they keep important files. The water department responded quickly.

“Another time, the Chinese Consulate in Manhattan called in consternation,” she remembered. “They looked out their windows and to their shock there were flaming cars speeding by.”

It turned out to be a movie crew filming a chase scene. The crew had a permit, but nobody had notified the Chinese. “World War III is not breaking out,” she reassured them.

Part of her staff’s job is to cut through municipal red tape, provide advice on everything from leases to insurance, from child care to provisions for the handicapped.

Over time, there have been a sprinkling of minor crimes, an occasional shoplifting, a few assaults, usually involving teen-age sons of diplomats. But she insists that as a group the diplomatic corps is responsible and law-abiding.

There is a curious pattern in the parking violations, which are tracked by computer.

“We have a handful who tend to be chronic,” Sorensen said. “And then I discovered from friends in London that the worst chronic offenders here are, by nationality, the worst chronic offenders there.”

It often reflects the attitude toward the law they have at home. When a new ambassador comes in and cracks down, making them pay for their own parking tickets, even when they are not required to pay under international law, the parking violations clear up quickly.

Diplomatic immunity is a sometime thing. Heads of mission and their immediate family generally are immune from all local laws. But as one’s grade in post descends, one’s immunity erodes.

Even if they didn’t have to confront local or state law, they would have to face various degrees of censure from their home countries and the United Nations. For a while, debt was a large problem, so bad that some New York landlords wouldn’t rent to diplomatic missions. Probably the premier case involved Zaire, which is not a poor country.

When Zairian President Mobutu Sese Seko came to New York on a courtesy visit, Mayor Koch received him. After some polite conversation, the head of state asked Sorensen about Zaire’s debt in New York. She told him that his nation owed more than $150,000 in rent and other bills.

“The president was furious and berated his ambassador and his foreign minister, who were there,” she recalled. “When he heard the sum involved he said, ‘You come with us when we leave here.’ So I took a City Hall colleague with me and we went to the president’s hotel. Then and there, from suitcases, they literally paid us in cash, bundles of cash.”

Then there are the political demonstrations on the streets.

“We’ve had occasions when we’ve had two opposing views, the pro on this side of the street and the con on that side of the street,” she said.

New York gives wide latitude to demonstrators, but the police firmly enforce the limits, broad as they are.

“Sometimes it bothers the neighbors and sometimes it bothers the people in the mission or consulate being picketed,” she said. “We let it be a lesson in democracy, a lesson in free speech. I think that is not a bad lesson. They know they are in New York in the United States of America. They know what the rules and regulations are, that people can carry any flag they like and they can say anything, even outrageous things.

“They may not like it and it may not be allowed at home, but those are the rules we go by, so they accept it.”

It’s not the only lesson New York teaches the foreign diplomats.

“It’s heartwarming to me to see that the foreigner’s attitude and understanding toward this city and toward democratic society does change with time,” she said. “They arrive in New York somewhat intimidated and afraid of the city. Our reputation is kind of frightening. When they leave, I find a lot of them love New York. They love the options. They love the rhythm. They love the diversity and the mix. They love the freedoms that we take for granted. And they leave with regret.”

She said the New York experience stays with them. “We know that service in New York is an essential step on the career ladder of diplomats. And the younger the country, the younger the diplomat, the more true it is. And we’ll see them again, either as ambassador or minister or, in some cases, head of government.”

In her dozen years tending to diplomats, Sorensen has seen everything from a terrorist assassination to a head of government who wanted to hire a chef at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel and take him home with him because he liked his pancakes.

The Gorbachev visit on Dec. 6, 1988, marked the end of frosty and somewhat formal relations with the Soviet Union.

“Not only was the Soviet Union changing its historic role and becoming active and engaged and constructive in the U.N., but also the citizens of New York (were changing), with construction workers hanging out a huge sign that said, ‘Hard Hats Welcome Gorby.’ It was proof that you should never give up, that things can change and that diplomacy is not just a highfalutin term but a vehicle for that change.”

A footnote to the Gorbachevs’ quick trip: It took 5,000 extra police to provide security and traffic control, for which the city was reimbursed $2.5 million.

When the Gorbachevs had to cut short the visit on Dec. 8 because of the Armenian earthquake, it was a great disappointment to a fourth-grade class where Raisa Gorbachev was to visit. The 8-year-olds were all dressed up, their welcome sign was up and the refreshments were ready.

“This is where it goes beyond diplomacy to touch real people and change a view of another power, no longer an evil empire, but somebody’s country, a people to know and understand and to learn about,” Sorensen said.

To her, the whole experience has been extraordinary--and sometimes touching. When the sultan of Brunei arrived to celebrate his country’s joining the United Nations, he asked what the city needed. He wanted to present a little gift.

Of the hundreds of needs in New York, Sorensen named a few. When the Sultan called on the mayor, “he was about as shy as anyone I’ve ever seen. You could hardly hear him. He almost spoke in a whisper, so there was a slightly awkward exchange with the mayor. Then he reached into his pocket and took out his little gift. It was a check for $500,000 made out to ‘Meals On Wheels.’ ”

Economic Impact of Playing Host to the United Nations How much the presence of United Nations headquarters costs and benefits New York City in 1988 (thousands of dollars) Cost to New York City Direct Costs; $645 Budget of special city agency $3,900 Public school education for families of diplomats and staff $7,000 Extraordinary police protection Foregone revenue: $1,557 Unpaid parking fines, towing charges $20,400 Property taxes Total: $33, 502 Benefit to New York City $133,562 Spending by subsidiary programs $233, 645 Spending by member missions $7,000 Reimbursement for extraordinary police protection $138,090 Spending by consulates $352,000 General UN program spending Total: $864, 297 Source: N.Y.C. Commission for the U.N. and Consular Corps