US embassy cable - 04WELLINGTON784

UNCLAS WELLINGTON 000784 
 
SIPDIS 
 
STATE FOR IO/T-JANE COWLEY AND EAP/ANP-THOMAS RAMSEY 
 
E.O. 12356: N/A 
TAGS: SCUL, ETRD, NZ, UNESCO 
SUBJECT: NEW ZEALAND'S VIEWS ON UNESCO CULTURAL DIVERSITY 
CONVENTION 
 
REF: STATE 193533 
 
1.  Seeking New Zealand's support for U.S. positions on a 
UNESCO convention on cultural diversity, post on September 
10 delivered the reftel demarche to Jane Kominik of the 
Ministry of Culture and Heritage and to Charlotte Frater of 
the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade's United Nations 
and Commonwealth Division. 
 
2. Kominik, who will lead New Zealand's delegation to the 
UNESCO intergovernmental meeting September 20-25 in Paris, 
reported September 13 that her government agrees with the 
basic premise of the draft convention produced by UNESCO. 
She emphasized, nonetheless, that her government has a 
number of concerns about the convention in its current form, 
in particular its potential impact on New Zealand's existing 
obligations under trade agreements and other international 
treaties.  Kominik said Option B of Article 19 would be the 
only version that her government could entertain, because it 
might allow New Zealand both to comply with the convention 
and to meet its trade, human rights, intellectual property 
rights and other international treaty obligations. 
Otherwise, New Zealand could not comply with the convention 
as currently drafted. 
 
3. Kominik noted that her government also found the draft's 
definitions to be extraordinarily broad and imprecise, in 
view of the document's being legally binding.  The 
bureaucracy envisioned by the convention should be 
streamlined, including the elimination of a Cultural 
Diversity Observatory (whose proposed functions are 
performed by the Secretariat). 
 
4. She said that New Zealand's Minister of Culture is keen 
to promote cultural diversity and that the delegation would 
attend the intergovernmental meeting in a constructive mood. 
It would aim to work through the text to make it one that 
the delegation could accept. 
 
5. Besides Kominik, the New Zealand delegation's other 
members will be Shannon Ward, legal adviser in the Ministry 
of Foreign and Affairs and Trade's Legal Division, and New 
Zealand's permanent representative to UNESCO, Linda Te Puni, 
when she is available. 
 
Swindells