US embassy cable - 04THEHAGUE1235

UNCLAS SECTION 01 OF 02 THE HAGUE 001235 
 
SIPDIS 
 
DEPARTMENT FOR IO/S - ABRAHAMS/JACOBSON, L - BETTAUER, 
L/CID - CLODFELTER, L/PIL - KOVAR, L/UNA - KIINGI 
 
E.O. 12958: N/A 
TAGS: ABUD, AFIN, AORC, IBPCA 
SUBJECT: PCA:  SECRETARY GENERAL REAPPOINTED AFTER 
FRENCH-DOMINATED ADMINISTRATIVE COUNCIL MEETING 
 
REF: A. STATE 84654 
 
     B. STATE 105267 
 
1. (SBU) Summary: In a meeting dominated by the French 
Ambassador's nine interventions on budgetary and linguistic 
matters, the Permanent Court of Arbitration (PCA) 
Administrative Council approved the reappointment of 
Secretary General Tjaco van den Hout to a second five-year 
 
SIPDIS 
term.  The reappointment itself followed round praise by a 
number of delegations, without a voice of dissent.  The 
French indicated that they expect to make various proposals 
for consideration by a future Administration Council meeting, 
dealing in particular with its demand that the PCA hire 
French-speaking staff.  End summary. 
 
2. (SBU) The Administrative Council of the PCA met on May 17 
to consider its budgetary, financial and annual reports.  Two 
other items were on the agenda: a proposed mechanism to deal 
with Member States which have failed to provide assessed 
contributions more than two years running, and the 
reappointment of the Secretary General (SG).  The former item 
was deferred to the next PCA regular meeting, likely to take 
place in the fall. 
 
3. (SBU) Before reaching the SG's reappointment, the Council 
spent approximately two hours reviewing what many delegations 
considered to be a routine set of reports demonstrating (1) 
the PCA's performance under the current budget and (2) its 
level of activities over the past year.  Nonetheless, French 
Ambassador Anne Gazeau-Secret intervened a remarkable nine 
times on two specific issues.  First, she focused on the 
PCA's continuing budgetary difficulties, remarking that she 
could not understand how the PCA could be in a "precarious 
situation" even after last year's budget changes.  She made 
this point under a number of headings and was supported, to 
some extent, by Spain and Switzerland, and to a lesser extent 
Brazil.  The SG responded that he was "taken aback" by the 
French position, noting that the current budget was not 
expected to resolve the perennial budgetary problems the PCA 
faces.  The Swiss representative focused on what she called 
"transparency" in the PCA's budgeting process, and the French 
-- following South Africa's note of support for the SG's 
budget report -- then reviewed what she considered items that 
were "difficult to understand" in the current budget.  USDEL 
deployed the instructions in para 4 of ref A but also noted 
that we had no objection to the budget report.  Following the 
SG's response to the French explaining the budget, the report 
was adopted by consensus. 
 
4. (SBU) The SG introduced the financial report by noting 
that staff cuts occurred over the past year and that further 
vacancies are not expected to be filled because of the 
financial strains on the PCA.  He also has instituted a 
travel ban for staff in order to cut costs. The financial 
report was ultimately adopted, and then Gazeau-Secret 
launched into what appeared to be her delegation's main 
problem -- the lack of French-speaking staff.  She urged the 
PCA to be transparent in identifying staff and its 
"linguistic composition," including by identifying the 
nationality of each of the staff.  She said she would prepare 
a proposal for the next meeting, which the SG welcomed while 
at the same time explaining how the PCA's inability to hire 
has precluded it from replacing the Francophone staffers who 
left recently.  He also reminded the Council that the PCA 
maintains an extremely "tiny" staff compared to other 
organizations.  The French nonetheless returned to this theme 
a number of times during her remaining interventions. 
 
5. (SBU) Other delegations -- Switzerland, Spain, Cuba, 
Italy, Canada and Senegal -- echoed the linguistic message of 
France, while some couched it in terms of geographic 
representation.  The SG had two ready responses.  First, he 
expressed a desire to maintain at least one Francophone 
lawyer on staff, suggesting that he would recruit on a 
preferential basis to achieve this goal.  Second, he made a 
spirited case for the PCA's global efforts to attract cases 
and raise its profile.  He noted the foundation of regional 
arbitral facilities in Costa Rica and South Africa, and 
suggested that additional facilities are being considered for 
Central/Eastern Europe, Lebanon and Malaysia.  Like the other 
reports, the annual report was finally adopted by consensus. 
 
6. (SBU) The final agenda item concerned van den Hout's 
reappointment.  It was widely known that the French in The 
Hague were seeking to undermine van den Hout's position (ref 
B).  As it happened, the French did not muster any argument 
against his reappointment, seeking only to see whether the 
appointment could be deferred until a time when all EU 
ambassadors -- some of whom had left the meeting by this 
point -- were in the room.  (This was rejected by the chair.) 
 Thus, all reps who spoke up under this heading -- Jordan, 
Costa Rica, Hungary, South Africa, Pakistan, Slovak Republic, 
Egypt, Lebanon, and USDEL -- spoke in favor of his 
reappointment.  Van den Hout thanked USDEL privately for its 
work on behalf of his reappointment.  He expressed his 
particular thanks to Ambassador Sobel, who had raised with 
Foreign Minister Bot last week the strong U.S. support for 
van den Hout. 
 
7. (SBU) Comment: Going into the Council meeting, it was not 
clear that van den Hout's reappointment would go smoothly. 
As it turns out, the persistent and often sloppy critique by 
the French did not undermine van den Hout's reputation nor 
his position.  In some respects, the French interventions 
gave van den Hout repeated opportunities to tout the 
achievements of the PCA over the past year and to remind the 
Council that his original budget proposals last year -- which 
were too much for the diplomatic and budget traffic to bear 
-- would have gone much further in resolving the PCA's 
financial problems.  Embassy now anticipates that the French 
will make proposals on "linguistic" or "geographic" 
representation which the Council will consider by this fall. 
Without the leverage over van den Hout's position, however, 
it may be more difficult for the French to get the sympathy 
of other delegations and the PCA.  End comment. 
RUSSEL