US embassy cable - 05PARIS7128

UNCLAS SECTION 01 OF 03 PARIS 007128 
 
SIPDIS 
 
SENSITIVE 
 
FROM USMISSION UNESCO PARIS 
STATE PASS USTR C.BLISS, S. MCCOY 
NSC B. WILLIAMS 
 
E.O. 12958: N/A 
TAGS: ETRD, PREL, SCUL, BR, JA, FR, UNESCO 
SUBJECT:  USUNESCO:  UNESCO CULTURAL DIVERSITY 
CONVENTION RECEIVES PRELIMINARY APPROVAL 
 
1. Summary. The UNESCO preliminary draft convention on 
cultural diversity was approved with an overwhelming 
majority on October 17 by the General Conference 
Commission IV (culture) and will now be sent to the 
plenary for a vote on Thursday where it will almost 
certainly be approved.  U.S. attempts to amend the 
text were soundly rebuffed by a coalition led by the 
EU, Canada and Brazil .  A draft resolution designed 
to give a fig leaf to Japanese support of the 
convention was also passed.  End summary. 
 
2. The October 17 meeting of Commission IV (culture) 
was a love fest attended by at least 15 culture 
ministers.  More than 100 countries expressed their 
support for the convention and the need to get it 
passed as soon as possible.  Voices counseling 
dialogue were few and far between. 
 
3. While most interventions could be roughly described 
as "this convention will bring the end of suffering 
and poverty to the world," a few are worthy of note: 
 
A) South African culture minister (speaking for all 
African states), "this is not a trade agreement." 
B) Canadian heritage minister, the convention will 
be implemented "in full respect of existing 
international commitments." 
C) Mexican culture minister, "we want to select 
which cultural products we consume" (while still 
exporting our products to other countries.) 
D) UK ambassador (speaking for EU member states and 
aspirants), "difficulties remain for one state (the 
U.S.)...dialogue has continued we greatly value the 
return of the U.S. to UNESCO as we are committed to 
the same principles and valuesthis is a disagreement 
t 
between member states and UNESCO should not be 
blamed." (comment:  the statement about dialogue was a 
disingenuous attempt to categorize for other member 
states our discussions with the UK as negotiations, 
when there has been no willingness at all by EU states 
to reopen the convention.) 
E) Turkish ambassador, this is an acceptable 
compromise and Turkey has no reservations.  (note:  we 
were told earlier that the convention actually 
violates the Turkish constitution but intense EU 
pressure forced the Turkish government to withdraw 
their earlier reservation.) 
 
5. At the same time the media campaign has heated up. 
US Ambassador to UNESCO, Louise Oliver, did a media 
availability attended primarily by Canadian and French 
press (NY Times did attend and will write on 
Thursday).  A scheduled joint press conference by the 
French, Brazilian, Canadian and Senegalese culture 
ministers was cancelled over a dispute between the UK 
and France over who should speak about the convention. 
EU internal rules have heretofore prohibited member 
states from speaking about the issue and have reserved 
that right for the presidency.  Regardless of the 
rules, the conference is now reportedly rescheduled 
for Thursday at the French ministry of culture. (note: 
the French culture minister was quoted in the French 
press on Monday as saying that with the passage of the 
convention, France will no longer be the "black sheep" 
of l'exception culturelle, once again reinforcing the 
U.S. contention that the convention has been about 
trade all along.) 
 
6. We have reported septel about the shape of the 
voting and about those few brave countries that either 
dared to vote in support of the U.S. position or 
abstain.  We have also reported on Japan's unseemly 
haste to sign onto the convention.  While we gained 
scant support for the 28 U.S. amendments to the 
convention, the U.S. delegation was able to present 
each of its amendments and put them to a vote.  The 
refusal to reopen the convention was so strong that 
among the amendments voted down was a proposal to add 
"respect for" to the words cultural diversity in the 
preamble and "in conformity with other international 
obligations" in other operative articles. 
 
7. (SBU) (comment) for those readers who remain 
perplexed why the United States has not been able to 
join in a convention about cultural diversity, we 
suggest that you type the terms cultural diversity and 
diversite culturelle into an internet search engine. 
You will find that in English the term primarily 
refers to cultural and ethnic diversity as understood 
by Americans.  The latter will yield results about 
anti-globalism, l'exception culturelle and American 
cultural hegemony.  Despite its high sounding 
language, the UNESCO convention has really been about 
the latter. 
 
8. (SBU) (comment continued) as we have said in 
previous messages, this convention is what happens 
when culture ministers are allowed to make foreign and 
trade policy.  Unfortunately, despite our best 
efforts, a poorly written document full of ambiguities 
on key points and with potential to cause serious 
mischief in the areas of trade and human rights is 
within days of passage. 
9.  (SBU) (comment continued) it has been pointed out 
to us by several delegations that one of the fault 
lines running through the convention is the broad 
language on the importance of minority and indigenous 
populations contained in the preamble while the 
operant language gives states the sovereign right to 
impose a national culture on their populations. 
 
10. (SBU) (comment continued) the role of the EU and 
EC in promoting this convention is noteworthy.  The 
convention only needs ratification by 30 parties (as 
opposed to states parties) to come into effect and 
these parties can include "regional economic 
integration organizations," effectively giving the EC 
a form of additionality.  We are also concerned that 
representatives of EU member states at UNESCO, acting 
in concert with Canada and Brazil, worked hard and 
enthusiastically to thwart the U.S. at every turn to 
ensure a sizable vote against any U.S. attempt to push 
for more negotiation.  This happened during 
negotiations and has continued at the General 
Conference.  Actions at UNESCO were accompanied by 
intense EC, French, British and Canadian lobbying in 
capitals urging other members not to reopen the 
convention (in effect not to support the U.S.)  we 
heard some voices among EU members complaining about 
the process and the heavy hand of the commission, but 
there never seemed to be a serious effort by members 
to push back or to look at the consequences to UNESCO 
and broader relations with the U.S. 
 
11. (SBU) (comment continued) Canada has been raising 
the flag of Canadian culture for years.  We are not 
quite sure what it is in Anglophone Canada, but Ottawa 
seems to feel it must be protected there as well as in 
Quebec.  Canadian media accounts have expressed 
disappointment that the convention is ambiguous about 
its relationship to other instruments and does not 
have clear precedence over WTO disagreements. 
Regardless, we have already seen press reports that 
Canada intends to ratify by the end of the year. 
 
12.  (SBU) (comment continued)  Brazil has also been 
problematic in this process.  Besides working with the 
EU and Canada against the U.S., the Brazilians blocked 
all attempts to include any discussion of IPR in the 
convention beyond the preamble.  The Brazilian 
ambassador was also annoyingly aggressive in his 
interventions.  It probably did not take much to get 
Brazil to join in the cultural diversity parade, but 
the year of Brazil in France certainly must not have 
hurt. 
 
13.  (SBU) (comment continued) Japan's haste to sign 
onto the convention was unseemly.  Japan allowed its 
already weak draft resolution on the interpretation of 
the convention to be further weakened by Canada.  In 
order not to upset the tenuous agreement they had 
reached with Canada, the EU and Brazil, that 
ostensibly gave them cover to vote for it, we were 
treated to the spectacle of Japan voting against each 
of the U.S. amendments and speaking against a U.S. 
proposal to add language from the UNESCO constitution 
to the amendment.  We can only surmise that Japan did 
this to prevent Director General Matsuura from losing 
face.  Time will tell if the DG ultimately loses much 
more face when he is remembered as the one in charge 
when this convention was drafted and adopted. 
 
14. (SBU) (comment continued) this leads us to the 
future of UNESCO.  Several disquieting trends have 
emerged along with the convention.  First, impelled by 
the EU acting as a bloc, other regional groupings came 
out with united positions in support of the 
convention.  Few were the small countries willing to 
go against their regional positions.  The various 
groups included the G-77, the Francophonie, the Latin 
union, African group and others.  Even countries such 
as those in Central America, which just signed onto 
CAFTA, felt compelled to support their regional group. 
If this trend continues on other major issues or at 
other UN venues, there is a risk of continued us 
isolation. 
 
15. (SBU) comment continued) there is also the issue 
of venue shopping.  We believe that when France and 
other supporters of "l'exception culturelle" could not 
get recognition of the concept in the WTO, they turned 
to UNESCO where business is conducted with much less 
rigor than in other international organizations.  We 
already hear disquieting talk of UNESCO taking over 
the "substance" of the internet with technical issues 
remaining at the ITU in Geneva and UNESCO encroachment 
into WIPO and who areas of expertise. 
 
16.  (SBU) (comment continued)  finally, the U.S. came 
back to UNESCO to engage in the organizations 
education, science and culture programs (beyond 
cultural diversity).  We are already starting to see 
good results in those areas and have just been elected 
to the world heritage committee.  Unfortunately, we 
may have also unwittingly lent legitimacy to the 
proponents of cultural diversity a la UNESCO.  Our 
good-faith efforts at negotiation were not 
reciprocated, but our participation gave legitimacy to 
a process that would have had little value without a 
U.S. presence.  Clearly, the future of our engagement 
with UNESCO will have to be examined carefully. 
 
OLIVER