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 NNNN