US embassy cable - 03THEHAGUE2944

UNCLAS SECTION 01 OF 04 THE HAGUE 002944 
 
SIPDIS 
 
SENSITIVE 
 
STATE FOR AC/CB, NP/CBM, VC/CCB, L/ACV, IO/S 
SECDEF FOR OSD/ISP 
JOINT STAFF FOR DD PMA-A FOR WTC 
COMMERCE FOR BIS (GOLDMAN) 
NSC FOR CHUPA 
WINPAC FOR LIEPMAN 
 
E.O. 12958: N/A 
TAGS: PARM, PREL, CWC 
SUBJECT: CHEMICAL WEAPONS CONVENTION (CWC):  WEEKLY WRAP-UP 
FOR 21 NOV 2003 
 
 This is CWC-124-03. 
 
--------------------------------------------- 
Improving Efficiency of the Executive Council 
--------------------------------------------- 
 
1. (U) OPCW Director for Policy Making Organs Sylwin Gizowski 
addressed the WEOG November 18, responding to the group s 
invitation to suggest improvements to the work of the 
Executive Council.  Gizowski spoke in a personal capacity, 
acknowledging that is was not the responsibility of the 
Technical Secretariat to evaluate the EC. 
 
2. (U) He opened with the observation that some obvious 
benchmarks, like the number of meetings or decisions taken by 
the EC, were not good measures of efficiency.  While some 
quantitative benchmarks might be useful, the key was to 
evaluate how well it fulfilled its powers and functions 
spelled out in Article 8 of the Convention:  to promote 
implementation and compliance with the Convention, supervise 
the work of the TS, and cooperate with National Authorities. 
 
3. (U) Gizowski said that accountability and timeliness were 
two areas clearly showing room for improvement by the EC. 
Like the TS, States Parties and the EC itself had 
responsibility to provide information and recommendations on 
time.  The most obvious failing in this regard was the 
Council,s perennial last-minute recommendation to the CSP on 
the budget level.  The quality of intersessional work should 
also be addressed.  Expansion of the "Cluster" system 
currently used for addressing industry issues could be 
helpful, he suggested, particularly as the number of issues 
requiring facilitation continued to increase while the number 
of facilitators declined.  Requests for papers from the TS 
should be spread insofar as possible over the calendar year 
rather than heaped up during consultations, overstressing the 
staff's capacity to respond.  Gizowski also suggested more 
tightly focusing the EC agenda.  The Plan of Activities had 
grown over the years, and included some items dating from the 
PrepCom which no lon 
ger had relevance to the activities of the organization.  The 
list had been intended as an "index" of issues, rather than a 
to-do list, and should be reviewed in terms of priorities for 
implementation. 
 
4. (U) Gizowski identified two over-arching problems 
hampering the work of the EC:  the "easy no" and 
"insufficient multilateralism."  Compared to other 
multilateral fora, he claimed, delegates at the EC felt 
little embarrassment at blocking consensus.  Gizowski added 
that the use of timetables for decisions or action was 
necessary, citing progress on the Action Plan for National 
Implementing Measures. When this occurred, he suggested, the 
dissenting representative should be pressed to clearly 
explain his nation,s compelling reason for opposing the 
decision.  The second problem he alluded to was for extensive 
bilateral negotiations to sometime displace multilateral 
consultation.  Clearly alluding to U.S.-Russia discussions on 
the margins of EC sessions, Gizowski said that bilateral 
agreements were often presented at the last minute to the EC 
as inflexible decisions.  This same process, however, is also 
surfacing in other areas of negotiation such as the Action 
Plan on National Implementing Measures and the work of the 
industry cluster, where increasingly the pattern is evolving 
that India/Iran and the U.S./U.K. must 'huddle' before text 
can be put to the whole group as a fait accompli.  He urged 
broader and earlier multilateral participation in such 
debates, in part for the "educational" benefit of the other 
members and to allow for peer pressure to mitigate State 
Party agendas.  In the question-and-answer session that 
followed Gizowski,s presentation, Ambassador Javits 
described the difficulties the U.S. Delegation had 
experienced in reaching timely agreement with the Russians in 
advance of the CSP, and a number of delegates nodded in 
understanding. 
 
5. (U) Turning to organizational matters, Gizowski made 
several specific proposals: 
 
- Greater involvement of EC Vice-Chairpersons or others on 
the sidelines of informal consultations to overcome deadlocks 
encountered by facilitators. 
 
- Retention and expansion of the "Cluster" arrangement for 
informal consultations. 
 
- Excluding issues not ripe for EC decision from the EC 
agenda by conducting a meeting of facilitators in advance of 
the Session to evaluate ripeness of issues, and inclusion of 
clear and timely recommendations to the EC by working groups 
to avoid time-consuming negotiation at EC sessions.  Last 
minute additions or proposals hamper progress. 
 
- Revising the terms of office for Council Chairpersons and 
other officers to better coincide with Conference sessions. 
(Gizowski also suggested that scheduling CSP sessions in the 
spring had worked better than in the fall.) 
 
- Reducing the number of EC Sessions per year. 
 
6. (U) In conclusion, Gizowski addressed some of the main 
substantive issues currently before the EC.  He urged that 
implementing Action Plans on National Implementation and on 
Universality should be a priority for the EC, and settling 
the selection methodology for inspection of Other Chemical 
Production Facilities (OCPF).  Specifically, Gizowski cited 
the need to increase the nonproliferation objectives of the 
Convention by addressing the issue of discrepancies in 
transfers of scheduled chemicals and the accuracy and 
timeliness of declarations.  He also highlighted the need to 
establish a requirement for "nil declarations" and achieving 
consensus on a format for declarations on protective 
programs.  Finally, he returned to budget preparations, 
suggesting that preliminary consultations begin in January if 
necessary to reach timely agreement. 
 
7. (U) At Ambassador Javit,s request, Gizowski agreed to 
prepare a non-paper summarizing his presentation for more 
systematic EC consideration.  In the question and answer 
session following the presentation further ideas were raised, 
including shortening EC sessions or scheduling fewer during 
the year.  Different views were expressed on the usefulness 
of the annotated agendas for the EC,s.  Further time for Q & 
A has been blocked for Gizowski at the November 25 WEOG. 
 
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ABAF-15 
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8. (SBU) The Advisory Body on Administrative and Financial 
Matters held its fifteenth session November 17-21.  The 
agenda item that received the most attention was an update on 
Results-Based Budgeting and the Medium Term Plan.  While 
recognizing that preparation of the MTP in no way prejudged 
future budgets, which would be set by the Policy Making 
Organs, the Director General advised ABAF members that the 
2005 budget might be held to zero real growth.  On that 
basis, the first draft of the MTP included two budget 
projections, one assuming zero real growth and the other 4% 
growth.  Although the MTP also anticipated savings in a 
number of areas, neither of the projected budgets supported 
current levels of inspection activity.  This came to the 
attention of WEOG delegations, which objected to the 
preparation of a plan that projected cuts in the core 
activities of the organization.  U.S. ABAF expert John Fox 
told DelOff that DDG Hawtin proposed to address these 
complaints by dropping the 4% growth projection and simply 
noting that the projected zero-growth budget would not be 
sufficient to sustain current levels of activity. 
 
9. (U) The ABAF report, completed November 21, recommended 
that the MTP be redrafted to indicate to what extent 
anticipated savings, increased income for verification 
activities, and the on-call inspector scheme would offset the 
anticipated shortfall of resources for inspections noted 
elsewhere in the document.  The report noted the MTP 
projection that if the budget was held to zero real growth, 
"there would be an inability to fulfill what has been 
identified as the Organization,s first priority, i.e., 
verification of disarmament activities, and to perform any 
Art. VI inspections or other operational activities." 
 
10. (U) The issue of establishing a stabilization mechanism 
for late payments of verification costs under Articles IV and 
V was added to the ABAF agenda under "Any Other Business" in 
light of informal consultations on Article IV/V scheduled for 
the following week.  Drawing on facilitator Johan Verboom of 
the Netherlands, discussion paper, ABAF proposed a solution 
consisting of five elements: 
 
- allowing repayment of the Working Capital Fund "as soon as 
feasible" rather than by the end of the next financial year; 
 
- increasing the cap on the WCF to perhaps 14% of the budget, 
or roughly 10 million Euros; 
 
- funding this initially out of the remaining cash 
"surpluses" from 2001-2003; 
 
- using future late payments by possessor states to replenish 
the WCF; and 
 
- allocating any additional funds from Article IV/V payments 
to the cash surplus to be returned to States Parties. 
 
----------------------------------------- 
Implementing the Universality Action Plan 
----------------------------------------- 
 
11. (SBU) Del provided U.S. views on implementing the 
Universality Action Plan to External Relations Director Huang 
Yu and other Secretariat officials, and to the WEOG.  A 
meeting scheduled for November 21 to solicit volunteer 
regional and sub-regional Points of Contact was postponed to 
allow the participation of Mr. Huang (whom the Director 
General is to designate as the TS Point of Contact), and 
possibly of DG Pfirter as well.  Disagreement over the need 
for further facilitation of the Universality Action Plan was 
another reason for the postponement.  The Indian delegation 
wrote to Huang, objecting to the ongoing role of former 
facilitator Consuelo Femenia of Spain in calling the meeting 
and proposing the agenda.  Femenia had earlier stated that 
she did not wish to continue as facilitator after the 
adoption of the Action Plan, but nevertheless told DelOff 
that she would challenge India,s contention that she was no 
longer needed. 
 
12. (U) The TS anticipates that the Director General will 
formally appointed Huang as POC in the coming days.  Huang is 
to chair a meeting with interested States Parties on 
implementing Universality November 26.  At that meeting, 
Huang will solicit volunteer regional and sub-regional POCs, 
schedule a meeting with these POCs (probably on the margins 
of EC-35), and provide preliminary thoughts on a schedule of 
universality-related activities for 2004. 
 
-------------------- 
Staff Council Issues 
-------------------- 
 
13. (SBU) Chairman of the Staff Council Gordon Vachon 
provided an update on issues of concern to OPCW staff to 
DelOff November 19.  At the Council's Annual General 
Conference the day before, Vachon had been re-elected to a 
second term as chairman, and he said that considerably more 
candidates had stood for election to the other eight 
positions on the council than the year before.  (The Council 
includes four representatives each from the general and 
professional grades, as well as the Chairperson.)  Vachon 
attributed that to the Council,s increasing activism on 
behalf of its members.  He gave a positive assessment of 
recently appointed Director for Human Relations Eva Murray, 
but said that her efforts to reduce friction between staff 
and management had had limited success, and it was "a 
fiction" that management consulted with staff representatives 
on issues that affected them.  There had been some 
improvement in the staff,s treatment by the host nation, 
such as agreement to allow those whose contracts had been 
terminated to remain in the Netherlands until the end of 
their children,s school terms. 
 
14. (U) On the status of OPCW staff members, anticipated 
lawsuits to the ILO Administrative Tribunal, Vachon 
understood that suits had been filed following the release of 
roughly a dozen inspectors on November 13.  However, he did 
not have detailed information on those complaints, and OPCW 
Acting Legal Adviser Isaac Minta told us the next day that he 
was unaware of any new suits involving OPCW at the ILO/AT. 
Vachon stuck by his earlier assessment that up to 50 suits 
could be expected before the tenure policy had run its 
course, and that this could cost the organization anywhere 
from 2 million to 10 million euros. 
 
15.  (U)  Javits sends. 
SOBEL