Powell Brokers Parking Peace

After a personal phone call from Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, who temporarily put aside such concerns as Afghanistan and Mideast peace to deal with cars, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg announced a truce Friday in New York City’s diplomat parking wars.

The result: Municipal tow trucks will not haul away illegally parked autos belonging to officials of foreign consulates, as Bloomberg had threatened.

The Bush administration pledged in return to help collect a portion of fines owed the city and to limit the number of license plates it issues to some representatives of foreign governments.

“We have an agreement in principle,” Bloomberg announced at a City Hall news conference. “It is not signed. There are still details.”

But by his cheerful tone, Bloomberg clearly was optimistic that representatives of the city and the State Department, after negotiations that ended before dawn Friday, finally had solved a problem that has frustrated generations of mayors and motorists.

With seeming impunity, especially in Midtown Manhattan where many consulates are situated, diplomats have parked cars in no-parking zones in violation of traffic regulations.

At times, the vehicles have blocked fire hydrants.

City officials say the parking habits of the diplomats are more than a nuisance and could create additional hazards when emergency vehicles are trying to move through normally crowded streets.

Earlier this week, the Bloomberg administration announced it would begin towing illegally parked cars with consular plates Friday unless the Bush administration went to court for an injunction.

The focus was on the 700 vehicles with consular license plates in the city. The U.S. State Department registers these vehicles.

Consulates, which chiefly provide visas, promote commerce and care for foreign nationals, enjoy a lesser degree of diplomatic immunity than members of missions to the United Nations.

U.N. members whose cars also are registered by the federal government are issued different diplomatic license plates with the initials DPL.

In New York City, 1,600 vehicles have DPL plates.

On Thursday afternoon, as talks between the Bush administration and the city appeared stalled, Powell called Bloomberg and asked him to return to the negotiating table.

State Department officials contended that towing consular cars would violate treaties and harm international relations unless the vehicles created an immediate safety hazard.

These officials also feared retaliation against U.S. diplomats in other countries.

The administration of former Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani had contended that foreign diplomats not only were flouting the law but were running up huge fines in unpaid parking tickets.

One estimate put the total owed with interest at $22 million--a figure the mayor said Friday was inaccurate.

“The $22 million would never really stand up. There are lots of cases where one car got five tickets in half an hour and the courts would throw out at least four of them,” Bloomberg said. “There are a lot of cases where you can argue we would never collect the interest.”

“I think you’ve got to be careful in using that figure,” the mayor cautioned.

“It’s probably more like a tenth of that.”

Bloomberg said some details in the agreement still needed to be worked out, but representatives of the State Department had pledged it would dramatically reduce the number of consular license plates and would help the city “through a variety of moral persuasion and financial withholding” to collect some of the fines.