SPAIN'S RESPONSE TO DEMARCHE ON OPPOSING

UNCLAS MADRID 003650 SIPDIS FOR IO/UNP - RAYMOND HOTZ FOR NEA/WE CLEMENTS AND HALL E.O. 12958: N/A TAGS: PREL SP UNGA SUBJECT: SPAIN'S RESPONSE TO DEMARCHE ON OPPOSING ANTI-ISRAEL BIAS REF: SECSTATE 188933 ¶1. (U) Poloff delivered reftel demarche to Juan Manuel Gonzalez de Linares, MFA Deputy Director General for the United Nations. He said that Spain would not support the resolutions renewing the mandate of committees mentioned in the demarche (Spain usually abstains),but voting against them would involve input from the DG for the Middle East, and he referred Poloff to his office. He said in any event that the UNSG in New York in September had ordered all the entities of the UN to revise their mandates in order to streamline operations, and he was interested to see how the resulting report to be produced by November 11th might affect these committees. ¶2. (U) Polcouns followed up with MFA Director General for the Mediterranean, Near East and Africa Alvaro Iranzo, who said Spain does not support gratuitously anti-Israel resolutions, but that they did occasionally use their abstentions as leverage to send a signal to the Israeli government. He said Spain usually followed EU consensus in such cases. However, Iranzo took reftel talking points and said he would consider the USG request. AGUIRRE