COLUMN ONE : Agents of Palm Tree Diplomacy : Want to put your country on the map? Add to your economic clout? Try opening a consulate here. That’s what a growing number of nations have done, from tiny Burkina Faso to giant China.

When Hungary cast off 40 years of communist rule in 1989, one of its first major diplomatic moves to help resuscitate a crumbling economy was to look west . . . way west.

Like try West L.A.

Despite economic chaos back home, the government opened its first consulate of the post-Cold War era in Los Angeles. It leased a ritzy office on Wilshire Boulevard and dispatched Andras Marton, a former stage actor and director, to serve as consul general.

His instructions were clear: “Put Hungary on the map.”

“The bottom line is money,” said Marton, whose only previous diplomatic experience was soothing bruised theatrical egos. “It’s as simple as that.”

The opening of the Hungarian consulate last year was one of the latest in a steady migration of diplomats to the Los Angeles region over the past 20 years, paralleling the area’s rise as a gateway of the Pacific Rim.

Long considered a backwater, Los Angeles is now home to the third-largest diplomatic corps in the country--trailing only New York City and Washington.

The State Department counts 75 foreign missions in the Los Angeles area, including three consulates in Orange County.

The stature of these missions has risen as diplomacy has shifted with the end of the Cold War from ideological conflicts to economic competition over four-star hotel projects and chicken-to-go franchises. From the tiny one-man operation of Burkina Faso to the hulking Chinese contingent, the diplomats have launched a battle for dollars as intense as the old grudge matches over dogma.

What the envoys have found is a region of tantalizing wealth and power--virtually a nation-state unto itself. But they also have discovered a place of bewildering complexity that often seems to be wobbling its way toward world stature.

For Marton, that means one moment he may be reading a Hungarian translation of a local Chinese news article about a Los Angeles trade forum on Eastern Europe; the next, he is trying to tell a businessman how to find Hungary on the map.

He marvels at the vast diversity of Southern California and believes that somewhere out in that sprawl is the answer to achieving world peace. Then he remembers that just a year ago he watched the place go up in flames.

“I am just gaping all the time,” he said.

The flow of diplomats here has been slow but steady. The number of consulates has grown by more than two dozen since the 1970s, when San Francisco was the hub of West Coast diplomacy.

San Francisco has been losing consulates in the past two decades, dropping from 64 to about 60 as the focus of business moved southward.

The latest burst of new consulates here followed the fall of communism in Eastern Europe in the late ‘80s. Poland was the first, opening an office in 1991. Hungary arrived a year later. Armenia and the Czech Republic have received clearance from the State Department and are expected to be the next to come.

Pacific Rim countries have also joined the club: China in 1988 and, most recently, the Republic of the Marshall Islands, which opened its consulate in Orange County in January.

In response to the growth, the State Department opened an Office of Foreign Missions in Los Angeles last September to monitor the activities of diplomats and ensure that they obey a complex set of regulations based on how their home countries treat U.S. diplomats abroad.

But despite its increasing importance, Los Angeles seems to be struggling with its role as a global city.

Two decades of unprecedented immigration and trade have transformed the region’s traditional focus on Asia and Latin America. Nonetheless, diplomats say that broadening the area’s vision beyond the Pacific Rim is a daunting task.

Jan Szewc, consul general of Poland, said that despite a large Polish-American community here, his country is still viewed as a distant possibility for trade. The questions he sometimes fields from potential investors--such as, “Do polar bears roam the streets of Warsaw?”--can border on the mind-boggling and are a frustrating sign of how much work remains.

“Sometimes, I am just astonished,” said Szewc, a former economist and computer scientist.

Poland’s problem pales in comparison to those of the tiny Republic of the Marshall Islands, a former U.S. territory that became a semi-independent state in 1986.

Consul Gen. David Kabua said that, to begin with, most people have no idea where the islands are.

Worse yet, he keeps encountering the strange idea that his home no longer exists, having been obliterated by nuclear testing.

“Didn’t that place disappear with the Bomb?” Kabua said, repeating the question that drives him crazy. “It is very disheartening.”

Adapting to reality in Los Angeles also is no easy task.

Gabriella Meneghello Battistello, consul general of Italy, said that for all the pleasures of living here, there is a disorienting lack of focus. Just trying to get from one place to another is frustrating.

“I miss New York,” said Battistello, a career diplomat who also served in Copenhagen and Rome.

Hungary’s Marton--who was named consul general because of his clean political record, artistic credentials and gregarious nature--said that despite his love of Southern California, there are some aspects to life here that are almost incomprehensible to people from other lands.

“Los Angeles is not a nice place . . . it’s rough,” he said, using polite terminology to describe gang violence, drive-by shootings and carjackings.

Adding an almost biblical gloom to his vision of the city, he said: “I have also experienced a couple of floods and earthquakes.”

Despite their elite status as senior representatives of a foreign government, consular officials say they often think their voices are barely heard in the din of competing interests here.

“It is almost impossible to make ourselves visible,” Marton said. “We have to fight every day for some appreciation.”

They aggressively market their homelands, sponsoring conferences that bring their high government officials together with investors. The strategy has an almost desperate flair at times.

“New Frontiers in Central and Eastern Europe--GET IN ON THE GOLD RUSH!” said a brochure for one conference.

Even war-torn Croatia managed to crow in a short blurb: “In spite of a significant decline in economic activity, mainly due to the state of war and destroyed industrial facilities and transport lines, the foreign trade in 1992 produced positive results.”

Much of the diplomats’ time is consumed by an endless string of parties that seem glamorous, but are widely regarded as a tedious but necessary part of promoting their home countries.

“It can all get a little tiring physically,” said Jaak Treiman, the honorary consul for the Baltic state of Estonia.

In May--a light month--Treiman attended the Polish National Day celebration, a private preview of tapestries at the Polish consulate, a meeting of the U.S. Baltic Foundation, a conference at the World Trade Center, a farewell luncheon with then-Mayor Tom Bradley and the Argentine National Day celebration.

“There are times in the month that I really hate going to these events,” Treiman said. But for a country as small as Estonia, making one contact or seeing the Estonian flag fly alongside heavyweights like China and Japan often makes a party worth attending, he said.

Treiman is one of 25 honorary consuls here--a group of volunteers who usually represent small countries that cannot afford to open full-time offices.

The vast majority are attorneys who work as part-time consuls. Some do it because of cultural ties to the country they represent, others out of a desire to foster business for their own practices. Most agree that it is simply fun to circulate in the diplomatic circles.

Although the majority of full-time consulates are on Wilshire Boulevard, the offices of honorary consuls are scattered in undistinguished locations throughout Los Angeles County, from Canoga Park to San Gabriel.

“When you see a Mission Burrito, I’m in the building right next door,” Treiman said, describing the location of the Estonian consulate.

The diplomatic hierarchy is dominated by countries such as China, Japan and Mexico, whose political and economic clout make them forces to be reckoned with around the globe.

And despite the world’s various conflicts, there are rarely fights among the consular corps because political issues are largely left to the embassies in Washington, which are the primary representatives of foreign governments in the United States.

The consulates operate as branch offices of the embassies and are mostly responsible for fostering trade and serving the needs of expatriate communities, such as approving travel documents, resolving legal issues and providing contact with their own governments.

For many consulates, one of the most strenuous tasks is dealing with the large, powerful communities of their own citizens in Southern California.

From within the expatriate ranks have sprung such leaders as Raffi Hovanissian, the former foreign minister of Armenia; Milan Panic, former premier of Yugoslavia, and Hsu Hsin-liang, Taiwan’s most famous dissident and now the head of the opposition Democratic progressive party.

Hungary’s Marton estimated that he spends a quarter of his time ministering to the expatriate community.

“They fought to destroy communism. Now, they all demand the consul general help them fight, fight, fight. Over what, I don’t know,” he said. “They don’t understand the time of destruction is over.

“It is a devilishly impossible job,” he said.

Lebanese Consul Gen. Farid Abboud said the expatriate community is of crucial importance to his homeland because the majority of Lebanese live outside Lebanon.

He said his primary job in Los Angeles has been appealing to expatriates to help rebuild their homeland after years of civil war.

“How can you convince a foreigner to go to Lebanon if you can’t get your own people to go back?” Abboud asked. “Why should they invest their money if we won’t invest our money?”

His strategy has been simple: “We play on their emotions.”

He talks constantly with expatriates. He plies them with food, kibbeh and tabbouleh, made just the way they do back home. “We have a very good chef,” Abboud said. He helps them circumvent U.S. travel restrictions by stamping their visas on a separate piece of paper so there is no evidence of travel to Lebanon.

He is tireless in promoting his message that the civil war is over.

Abboud concedes that it has been a tough sell given the perceptions about violence in his homeland. But he keeps trying.

Taking an approach that only an Angeleno could appreciate, Abboud said: “The war is over. Per capita, we have less casualties than Los Angeles . . . maximum two or three a day.”