Šarec is a former actor and comic who started his profession in politics after profitable the mayoral election for the city of Kamnik in 2010. In 2017, he narrowly misplaced the Slovenian presidential election, however he was elected prime minister in 2018. He has been Slovenia’s minister of protection since June 2022. In accordance with the spokesperson, the minister can be “very inquisitive about historical past, and particularly in technical historical past.”
The Thursday earlier than the Argo tour, a safety element — which included two Slovenian particular forces members, confirmed as much as scope out the location, in accordance with Dustin Littleton — who’s in command of enterprise growth for the Argo. Šarec arrived the next Sunday in a motorcade after having lunch on the Tommyknocker Brewery & Pub — the place Lieutenant Colonel Brock realized that Slovenians have their very own model of the legend of Tommyknockers.
“The Minister’s go to was additionally honored by the mayor of Idaho Springs,” in accordance with the spokesperson for Šarec. Mayor Chuck Harmon says he and Šarec bonded through the Argo tour, since Šarec had as soon as served as a city mayor.
“I do not care the place you are mayor, persons are the identical,” Harmon tells Westword. “All people that was with the protection minister, together with the protection minister, spoke fairly good English, they usually had been so all the way down to earth and simply so approachable. You felt snug speaking to him about something.”
The historic Argo gold mine in Idaho Springs.
Carol M. Highsmith, 1946 / Library of Congress
After the tour, everybody panned for gold. “They actually liked the gold panning,” Harmon says. “However this is the factor I discovered fascinating: The protection minister is, like, actually good at gold panning. I did not ask him if he had ever finished it earlier than, however he positive had the approach down fairly darn good.”
Harmon says he was additionally impressed by the sorts of questions Šarec requested through the tour — particularly in regards to the chemical compounds used through the gold-refining course of.
“I even realized one thing from their questions,” Harmon says. “One in every of them requested how many individuals labored at that huge Argo mill. And since most of it was automated, there was solely a couple of half a dozen folks on a given shift. Now, I might have thought 100 or one thing [people worked there] for a spot that huge. I dwell eight homes away from [the Argo], and I had at all times been beneath the impression that there was a large variety of folks. So had they not requested that query, I nonetheless would have by no means recognized that.”
The spokesperson for Šarec says the minister “loved the tour of the mine.”
Colorado and Slovenia commenced their navy partnership on July 14, 1993. In accordance with Brock — who served as a Bilateral Affairs Officer for the Colorado Nationwide Guard within the U.S. embassy in Slovenia between 2009 and 2011, which is why he was requested to assist facilitate the thirtieth-anniversary journey — the pact got here after the autumn of the Soviet Union, with Slovenia and Colorado becoming a member of forces after Yugoslavia cut up up.
The partnership was “instrumental in creating capabilities and reaching interoperability between the 2 militaries and thus inside the Alliance,” says Šarec’s spokesperson. “Through the years, cooperation has shifted to particular areas of strategic significance to us, together with navy workouts and coaching, navy mountaineering and mountain warfare, navy aviation, nuclear, radiological, chemical and organic protection, safety and rescue, and, in recent times, cyber safety and protection.”
The anniversary journey additionally included a go to to the Colorado Nationwide Guard headquarters in Centennial and a dinner with Governor Jared Polis.
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