CROATIA EAGER TO BRAINSTORM NEXT STEPS ON REGIONAL

C O N F I D E N T I A L ZAGREB 001365

SIPDIS


DEPARTMENT FOR EUR/SCE:KABUMOTO, EUR/RPM, AC/CAC:YOUNG

E.O. 12958: DECL: 07/26/2014
TAGS: PARM MARR PREL HR NATO
SUBJECT: CROATIA EAGER TO BRAINSTORM NEXT STEPS ON REGIONAL
ARMS CONTROL

REF: A) 03 ZAGREB 2162 B)ZAGREB 921 C)USOSCE 250
D)FRIEDMAN-YOUNG E-MAILS OF 6/16/04


1. (U) This is an action message. Please see paragraph 5.


2. (C) On June 15 we met with Drazen Hrastic, Head of Office
for Cooperative Security, Ministry of Foreign Affairs in
advance of the Dayton Article IV Review Conference (REF C).
The essence of this conversation was passed to Department REF

D. Hrastic indicated that while Art. IV implementation on
measures for sub-regional arms control is ongoing, there is a
high level of implementation within the region and excellent
cooperation among the parties. Hrastic believes it is not
too soon to start thinking about a time when Art. IV will be
closed and its provisions subsumed to the CFE Treaty.


2. (C) FUTURE OF REGIONAL ARMS CONTROL: In this context,
Hrastic sought clarification of the U.S. approach to regional
arms control. Specifically, under what framework would
ongoing arms control and verification procedures be
conducted? Hrastic said the GoC would prefer that Art. II
elements be transferred to IV or possibly Art. V. However,
Hrastic said that some countries (unspecified) seemed to
support further confidence building and verification measures
be conducted in the OSCE framework. Hrastic emphasized that
Croatia would not block consensus, but he was simply seeking
U.S. views. The GoC wants to see consensus on three issues
related to Art. V: 1) its purpose; 2) its content; and 3)
general agreement between the OSCE and the parties.


3. FUTURE of RACVIAC: Expressing his personal opinion, in the
context of the U.S. leaving RACVIAC (Refs A and B),Hrastic
is concerned that the U.S. is backing out of the arms control
business in the Balkans. Hrastic complained that not all
RACVIAC members were proactive in determining what that
organization should be doing, particularly regarding training
activities. In that regard, Hrastic said that there appear
to be communication problems between the OSCE's Personal
Representative (designated under the Dayton Agreement) and
RACVIAC. The Office of the Personal Representative was not
providing sufficient feedback on training requests. Hrastic
was eager to learn the future U.S. role in RACVIAC to help
address these concerns and encouraged us to consider
permanent observer status. We indicated that the U.S. was
considering taking this position but we indicated that we
were unsure how strong a role the U.S. could take in
addressing organizational issues if we were to take on
observer status.


4. FUTURE TRAINING: Hrastic said that in his recent
Washington consultations, he had asked about possible U.S.
education and training for Dayton parties. He said that
there had been some initial discussion of training for
military NCOs and of training in disaster relief programs.
He asked what were the U.S. plans in this regard.


5. ACTION REQUEST: Post requests Department instructions for
answering Hrastic's specific questions on the future of the
Dayton annex and our role in RAVIAC.
FRANK


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