CHEMICAL WEAPONS CONVENTION (CWC): WEEKLY WRAP-UP

UNCLAS SECTION 01 OF 04 THE HAGUE 002944

SIPDIS

SENSITIVE

STATE FOR AC/CB, NP/CBM, VC/CCB, L/ACV, IO/S
SECDEF FOR OSD/ISP
JOINT STAFF FOR DD PMA-A FOR WTC
COMMERCE FOR BIS (GOLDMAN)
NSC FOR CHUPA
WINPAC FOR LIEPMAN

E.O. 12958: N/A
TAGS: PARM PREL CWC
SUBJECT: CHEMICAL WEAPONS CONVENTION (CWC): WEEKLY WRAP-UP
FOR 21 NOV 2003

This is CWC-124-03.

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Improving Efficiency of the Executive Council
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1. (U) OPCW Director for Policy Making Organs Sylwin Gizowski
addressed the WEOG November 18, responding to the group s
invitation to suggest improvements to the work of the
Executive Council. Gizowski spoke in a personal capacity,
acknowledging that is was not the responsibility of the
Technical Secretariat to evaluate the EC.


2. (U) He opened with the observation that some obvious
benchmarks, like the number of meetings or decisions taken by
the EC, were not good measures of efficiency. While some
quantitative benchmarks might be useful, the key was to
evaluate how well it fulfilled its powers and functions
spelled out in Article 8 of the Convention: to promote
implementation and compliance with the Convention, supervise
the work of the TS, and cooperate with National Authorities.


3. (U) Gizowski said that accountability and timeliness were
two areas clearly showing room for improvement by the EC.
Like the TS, States Parties and the EC itself had
responsibility to provide information and recommendations on
time. The most obvious failing in this regard was the
Council,s perennial last-minute recommendation to the CSP on
the budget level. The quality of intersessional work should
also be addressed. Expansion of the "Cluster" system
currently used for addressing industry issues could be
helpful, he suggested, particularly as the number of issues
requiring facilitation continued to increase while the number
of facilitators declined. Requests for papers from the TS
should be spread insofar as possible over the calendar year
rather than heaped up during consultations, overstressing the
staff's capacity to respond. Gizowski also suggested more
tightly focusing the EC agenda. The Plan of Activities had
grown over the years, and included some items dating from the
PrepCom which no lon
ger had relevance to the activities of the organization. The
list had been intended as an "index" of issues, rather than a
to-do list, and should be reviewed in terms of priorities for
implementation.


4. (U) Gizowski identified two over-arching problems
hampering the work of the EC: the "easy no" and
"insufficient multilateralism." Compared to other
multilateral fora, he claimed, delegates at the EC felt
little embarrassment at blocking consensus. Gizowski added
that the use of timetables for decisions or action was
necessary, citing progress on the Action Plan for National
Implementing Measures. When this occurred, he suggested, the
dissenting representative should be pressed to clearly
explain his nation,s compelling reason for opposing the
decision. The second problem he alluded to was for extensive
bilateral negotiations to sometime displace multilateral
consultation. Clearly alluding to U.S.-Russia discussions on
the margins of EC sessions, Gizowski said that bilateral
agreements were often presented at the last minute to the EC
as inflexible decisions. This same process, however, is also
surfacing in other areas of negotiation such as the Action
Plan on National Implementing Measures and the work of the
industry cluster, where increasingly the pattern is evolving
that India/Iran and the U.S./U.K. must 'huddle' before text
can be put to the whole group as a fait accompli. He urged
broader and earlier multilateral participation in such
debates, in part for the "educational" benefit of the other
members and to allow for peer pressure to mitigate State
Party agendas. In the question-and-answer session that
followed Gizowski,s presentation, Ambassador Javits
described the difficulties the U.S. Delegation had
experienced in reaching timely agreement with the Russians in
advance of the CSP, and a number of delegates nodded in
understanding.


5. (U) Turning to organizational matters, Gizowski made
several specific proposals:

- Greater involvement of EC Vice-Chairpersons or others on
the sidelines of informal consultations to overcome deadlocks
encountered by facilitators.

- Retention and expansion of the "Cluster" arrangement for
informal consultations.

- Excluding issues not ripe for EC decision from the EC
agenda by conducting a meeting of facilitators in advance of
the Session to evaluate ripeness of issues, and inclusion of
clear and timely recommendations to the EC by working groups
to avoid time-consuming negotiation at EC sessions. Last
minute additions or proposals hamper progress.

- Revising the terms of office for Council Chairpersons and
other officers to better coincide with Conference sessions.
(Gizowski also suggested that scheduling CSP sessions in the
spring had worked better than in the fall.)

- Reducing the number of EC Sessions per year.


6. (U) In conclusion, Gizowski addressed some of the main
substantive issues currently before the EC. He urged that
implementing Action Plans on National Implementation and on
Universality should be a priority for the EC, and settling
the selection methodology for inspection of Other Chemical
Production Facilities (OCPF). Specifically, Gizowski cited
the need to increase the nonproliferation objectives of the
Convention by addressing the issue of discrepancies in
transfers of scheduled chemicals and the accuracy and
timeliness of declarations. He also highlighted the need to
establish a requirement for "nil declarations" and achieving
consensus on a format for declarations on protective
programs. Finally, he returned to budget preparations,
suggesting that preliminary consultations begin in January if
necessary to reach timely agreement.


7. (U) At Ambassador Javit,s request, Gizowski agreed to
prepare a non-paper summarizing his presentation for more
systematic EC consideration. In the question and answer
session following the presentation further ideas were raised,
including shortening EC sessions or scheduling fewer during
the year. Different views were expressed on the usefulness
of the annotated agendas for the EC,s. Further time for Q &
A has been blocked for Gizowski at the November 25 WEOG.

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ABAF-15
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8. (SBU) The Advisory Body on Administrative and Financial
Matters held its fifteenth session November 17-21. The
agenda item that received the most attention was an update on
Results-Based Budgeting and the Medium Term Plan. While
recognizing that preparation of the MTP in no way prejudged
future budgets, which would be set by the Policy Making
Organs, the Director General advised ABAF members that the
2005 budget might be held to zero real growth. On that
basis, the first draft of the MTP included two budget
projections, one assuming zero real growth and the other 4%
growth. Although the MTP also anticipated savings in a
number of areas, neither of the projected budgets supported
current levels of inspection activity. This came to the
attention of WEOG delegations, which objected to the
preparation of a plan that projected cuts in the core
activities of the organization. U.S. ABAF expert John Fox
told DelOff that DDG Hawtin proposed to address these
complaints by dropping the 4% growth projection and simply
noting that the projected zero-growth budget would not be
sufficient to sustain current levels of activity.


9. (U) The ABAF report, completed November 21, recommended
that the MTP be redrafted to indicate to what extent
anticipated savings, increased income for verification
activities, and the on-call inspector scheme would offset the
anticipated shortfall of resources for inspections noted
elsewhere in the document. The report noted the MTP
projection that if the budget was held to zero real growth,
"there would be an inability to fulfill what has been
identified as the Organization,s first priority, i.e.,
verification of disarmament activities, and to perform any
Art. VI inspections or other operational activities."


10. (U) The issue of establishing a stabilization mechanism
for late payments of verification costs under Articles IV and
V was added to the ABAF agenda under "Any Other Business" in
light of informal consultations on Article IV/V scheduled for
the following week. Drawing on facilitator Johan Verboom of
the Netherlands, discussion paper, ABAF proposed a solution
consisting of five elements:

- allowing repayment of the Working Capital Fund "as soon as
feasible" rather than by the end of the next financial year;

- increasing the cap on the WCF to perhaps 14% of the budget,
or roughly 10 million Euros;

- funding this initially out of the remaining cash
"surpluses" from 2001-2003;

- using future late payments by possessor states to replenish
the WCF; and

- allocating any additional funds from Article IV/V payments
to the cash surplus to be returned to States Parties.

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Implementing the Universality Action Plan
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11. (SBU) Del provided U.S. views on implementing the
Universality Action Plan to External Relations Director Huang
Yu and other Secretariat officials, and to the WEOG. A
meeting scheduled for November 21 to solicit volunteer
regional and sub-regional Points of Contact was postponed to
allow the participation of Mr. Huang (whom the Director
General is to designate as the TS Point of Contact),and
possibly of DG Pfirter as well. Disagreement over the need
for further facilitation of the Universality Action Plan was
another reason for the postponement. The Indian delegation
wrote to Huang, objecting to the ongoing role of former
facilitator Consuelo Femenia of Spain in calling the meeting
and proposing the agenda. Femenia had earlier stated that
she did not wish to continue as facilitator after the
adoption of the Action Plan, but nevertheless told DelOff
that she would challenge India,s contention that she was no
longer needed.


12. (U) The TS anticipates that the Director General will
formally appointed Huang as POC in the coming days. Huang is
to chair a meeting with interested States Parties on
implementing Universality November 26. At that meeting,
Huang will solicit volunteer regional and sub-regional POCs,
schedule a meeting with these POCs (probably on the margins
of EC-35),and provide preliminary thoughts on a schedule of
universality-related activities for 2004.

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Staff Council Issues
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13. (SBU) Chairman of the Staff Council Gordon Vachon
provided an update on issues of concern to OPCW staff to
DelOff November 19. At the Council's Annual General
Conference the day before, Vachon had been re-elected to a
second term as chairman, and he said that considerably more
candidates had stood for election to the other eight
positions on the council than the year before. (The Council
includes four representatives each from the general and
professional grades, as well as the Chairperson.) Vachon
attributed that to the Council,s increasing activism on
behalf of its members. He gave a positive assessment of
recently appointed Director for Human Relations Eva Murray,
but said that her efforts to reduce friction between staff
and management had had limited success, and it was "a
fiction" that management consulted with staff representatives
on issues that affected them. There had been some
improvement in the staff,s treatment by the host nation,
such as agreement to allow those whose contracts had been
terminated to remain in the Netherlands until the end of
their children,s school terms.


14. (U) On the status of OPCW staff members, anticipated
lawsuits to the ILO Administrative Tribunal, Vachon
understood that suits had been filed following the release of
roughly a dozen inspectors on November 13. However, he did
not have detailed information on those complaints, and OPCW
Acting Legal Adviser Isaac Minta told us the next day that he
was unaware of any new suits involving OPCW at the ILO/AT.
Vachon stuck by his earlier assessment that up to 50 suits
could be expected before the tenure policy had run its
course, and that this could cost the organization anywhere
from 2 million to 10 million euros.


15. (U) Javits sends.
SOBEL