US embassy cable - 05OTTAWA2617

UNCLAS OTTAWA 002617 
 
SIPDIS 
 
SENSITIVE 
 
E.O. 12958: N/A 
TAGS: KSUM, ECON, PGOV, CA 
SUBJECT: DEMARCHE REQUEST: SUMMIT OF THE AMERICAS 
DECLARATION AND PLAN OF ACTION 
 
REF: SECSTATE 158875 
 
1. (SBU) Poloff delivered reftel demarche to Sarah 
Fountain-Smith, Director of the Brazil, Southern Cone, and 
Summit Coordination Office at Foreign Affairs Canada. 
Fountain-Smith said that Canada takes the summit process very 
seriously and Peter Boehm, Assistant Deputy Minister for 
Latin America and the PM's Summit Coordinator will lead the 
Canadian delegation to Buenos Aires.  Canada shares our 
concern with the pace of negotiations on the declaration but 
is not prepared to follow our recommendation to look for an 
alternative to the Declaration.  The GOC concern is that in 
doing so we would simply transfer the problems we are 
encountering now to the alternate process, and could in the 
end actually have a worse outcome. 
 
2. (SBU) The GOC, Fountain-Smith says, sees the declaration 
as the framework for the plan of action, and is concerned 
that shifting the focus away from it would leave any plan of 
action without the firm political support it needs to be 
successful.  She also sees many positive items in the 
declaration, e.g. on indigenous rights, that could drop out 
altogether if an alternate path was pursued.  Fountain-Smith 
believes that while the negotiations are slow, there is still 
time to accelerate the process next week, hopefully through 
the formation of working groups of some sort, to finally 
achieve the right outcome.  She thought that anything that 
breaks the gathering out of plenary and into more functional 
groups, would be beneficial and Canada will push this with 
the Argentines.  She did concede that if it were clear that 
things were not going to work we would have to talk again. 
Fountain-Smith also mentioned that there was cautious 
optimism that there could be positive language on the FTAA, 
with the right tone on the IFIs. 
 
Visit Canada's Classified Web Site at 
http://www.state.sgov.gov/p/wha/ottawa 
 
WILKINS