US embassy cable - 05PARIS6482

UNCLAS PARIS 006482 
 
SIPDIS 
 
FROM USMISSION UNESCO 
IO/UNESCO FOR JANE COWLEY 
 
E.O. 12958:     N/A 
TAGS: SCUL, ETRD, FR, EU, CJAN, UNESCO, UNESCO 
SUBJECT:  USUNESCO: PRELIMINARY DRAFT CONVENTION WTO 
WILL HAVE EQUAL LEGAL STANDING, SAYS FRENCH TV 5 
DIRECTOR 
 
 
1.  Following is a rough translation of excerpts 
from an op-ed piece by a Jean-Jacques Aillagon, the 
President and Director General of TV 5, a French 
broadcast TV station.  Aillagon is also a former 
Minister of Culture.  The op-ed piece appears in the 
21 September edition of Le Figaro, a right-of-center 
major French daily.  (Comment.  This piece seems to 
be part of an effort to inculcate the impression in 
the public at large that UNESCO preliminary draft 
Cultural Diversity Convention would, if adopted, 
supercede current international trade law.  End 
comment.) 
 
2.  Begin rough translation. 
 
In several days, the General Conference of UNESCO is 
going to discuss the preliminary draft convention on 
the protection of the diversity of cultural contents 
and artistic expressions.  Let UNESCO seize the 
occasion (\"Puisse l\'UNESCO saisir l\'occasion\") to, 
at long last, furnish an incontestable juridical 
base to the defense of the cultural exception, a 
base which other accords, such as the WTO, could not 
(successfully) challenge except, of course, for the 
Universal Declaration of Human Rights. 
 
Between the Fall 2003 General Conference and this 
one, an immense task has been completed.  It 
concluded a task that I had started, in my capacity 
as Minister of Culture and Communication, together 
with Sheila Copps, at that time the Canadian 
Minister of Patrimony.  In this battle, we put 
together a coalition of our counterpart Ministers of 
Culture, who are now united within an international 
network on cultural policy. . 
 
I presented on 29 August 2002 to the (French) 
Council of Ministers a statement putting this battle 
at the center of engagement of the French government 
and of my ministry.  It is this objective that drove 
us to impose the protection of cultural diversity 
into the draft European Constitution.  Later, at the 
beginning of 2004, this statement was the most 
important theme in a memorandum of the French 
government about cultural cooperation in Europe.. 
 
End rough translation of excerpts. 
 
Oliver 
 
 
1.