DEMARCHE REQUEST ON OSCE CORDOBA DECLARATION

UNCLAS OTTAWA 001615 SIPDIS SENSITIVE E.O. 12958: N/A TAGS: PREL PHUM CA OSCE SUBJECT: DEMARCHE REQUEST ON OSCE CORDOBA DECLARATION REF: SECSTATE 99914 SENSITIVE BUT UNCLASSIFIED. HANDLE ACCORDINGLY. ¶1. (SBU) Post delivered demarche points to Foreign Affairs Acting Director for North American and Euro-Atlantic Security and Defence Relations, Isabelle Poupart, the morning of May ¶31. In a follow-up discussion, Poupart said that the matter had been resolved earlier in the day in Vienna with agreement on acceptable language ("ongoing" role vs. "continued"). ¶2. (SBU) Poupart acknowledged that Canada was not too enthused about the "personal representative" concept because it broke down the problem of discrimination into component parts; the Canadian government favored maintaining a more "holistic" approach that maintained focus on all aspects of discrimination. Nonetheless, once a decision was taken in favor of appointing the personal representatives, Poupart continued, Canada was happy to let them finish their mandate (end of 2005). At the same time, she observed, "very little" had been heard from the personal representatives to date. Canada looked forward to hearing from them in Cordoba. ¶3. (SBU) Poupart speculated that unfounded rumors in Vienna, suggesting that Canada and others would seek to terminate the mandate of the personal representatives at the Cordoba meeting, were contributing factors to the perception that Canada was still actively opposing the personal representatives. Moreover, she said that use of the word "continued" in the text was confusing, given that the representatives were appointed for a one-year term only, and "continued" could be taken as pre-judging the outcome of the one-year review. Poupart was unaware of any NGOs contacting Foreign Affairs Canada (FAC) about the matter, though she indicated that "different Jewish organizations" had approached the Canadian mission in Vienna. Visit Canada's Classified Web Site at http://www.state.sgov.gov/p/wha/ottawa DICKSON