UN COMMISSIONER FOR REFUGEES: ITALIAN CANDIDATE

C O N F I D E N T I A L ROME 000747

SIPDIS


STATE FOR PRM, IO

E.O. 12958: DECL: 03/04/2015
TAGS: IO IT PREF ITALIAN POLITICS
SUBJECT: UN COMMISSIONER FOR REFUGEES: ITALIAN CANDIDATE
EMMA BONINO

Classified By: DCM Emil Skodon, 1.4 (b) and (d)


1. (U) Italian Radical Party leader Emma Bonino came to
Embassy Rome March 4 to meet NEA DAS Carpenter. Bonino's NGO
"No Peace without Justice" is managing an aspect of the
USG-GOI funded "Democracy Assistance Dialogue" under the G-8
Broader Middle East and North Africa initiative.


2. (C) After meeting Carpenter, Bonino stayed behind to
discuss with DCM and POL MC her candidacy for UN High
Commissioner for Refugees. According to Bonino, PM
Berlusconi has formally given her name to UNSYG Annan as the
Italian candidate. (Deputy FM called DCM later to confirm
that his government fully supported Bonino and hoped the USG
would). Bonino said that she is aware of three other
candidates who have been nominated by their governments:
Bernard Kouchner of France, Gareth Evans of Australia, and
"the Swedish Under Secretary" (presumably she meant Hans
Dahlgren). She expected other names to be put in before the
March 9 deadline, and said that she had the impression Mark
Malloch Brown would be the key decision maker for the UNSYG.
During the conversation, she noted that she thought
Canberra's nomination of Evans was pro forma and not very
enthusiastic. Kouchner was a strong candidate, she said, but
the French were already well represented in top UN positions
and may not push strongly for him, since other Europeans may
be reluctant to see another high-level French appointment.
In answer to her question, we said that the USG did not have
a favored candidate at this time, and that several of the
names being discussed appeared, like Bonino, to have the
required political standing and management skills.


3. (C) We asked Bonino to make her own case directly to us,
particularly on the management side. She noted that her
portfolio as EU Commissioner for Human Rights (1994-1999)
included the responsibility to establish and manage the
European Community Humanitarian Organization (ECHO) with a
budget of over a billion euros. While humanitarian funding
was as "bureaucratic as everything else in the EU", she said
that she had made the EU's humanitarian initiatives speedier
and more effective. She was particularly proud of how well
the EU had responded to the humanitarian crisis in Kosovo in

1999. Since ECHO had been a major donor to UNCHR in this
period, she was well aware of how it was funded and managed.
She said that she understands well the political challenge of
the job, and that while one should always try quiet diplomacy
first, she would have no hesitation to publicly "name and
shame" when necessary to get states to meet their obligations
to refugees.

EMBASSY COMMENT


4. (C) Bonino is the most prominent member of the Italian
Radical Party, which combines a strong social conscience with
a firm defense of individual freedoms. In Italy, it is the
party that everyone loves but nobody votes for, attracting
only two percent of the national vote (and no Chamber seats)
in the 2001 elections. The Radicals exert an influence on the
public debate that far surpasses their number, and are
actively courted by both the center-right and center-left
coalition. In the 1994 elections, Bonino was elected to the
Parliament as a Radical, but under the umbrella of
Berlusconi's Forza Italia party, an arrangement she may
repeat in next year's elections. (Her appointment to the
European Commission was made during Berlusconi's short-lived
1994 government).


5. (C) Four core elements of the Radical platform stand in
direct opposition to USG policy: opposition to the death
penalty; decriminalization of drugs; abortion rights (Bonino
was the driving figure in Italy's legalization of abortion in
the 1970s); and support for the International Criminal Court.
We don't see that these positions would cause us heartburn
in the UNHCR position (as opposed to the Human Rights
Commissioner, for which her name was floated, but not pushed,
in 2003).


6. (C) Her party and personal philosophy have led her to be
actively supportive of a number of other USG priorities.
Bonino was an early supporter of the establishment of
tribunals for Yugoslavia and Rwanda. She has
enthusiastically backed the Community of Democracies, and
Berlusconi appointed her to lead the Italian delegation to
the 2002 conference in Seoul. She helped organize and lead
campaigns for the inclusion of women in the new Afghanistan


government and (beginning in 1990) for the eradication of
female genital mutilation. Shortly after 9/11, she moved to
Cairo to study Arabic and immerse herself in a deeper
understanding of the Arab world. (She remains a Visiting
Professor at the American University of Cairo while shuttling
to the European Parliament and her NGO activities.) She is
an enthusiastic supporter of the reform goals of the G-8
Broader Middle East and North Africa initiative.


7. (C) We have the highest opinion of Bonino's intelligence,
energy, integrity and principles, all valuable qualities for
this position. She would be a charismatic leader of the
organization. Her outspokenness could at times cause us
problems. We are less well placed to judge directly her
management skills. Perhaps USEU could identify which USG
official worked most closely with ECHO from 1994 to 1999 to
give a better assessment of that.


8. (U) For those interested, Embassy Rome can send a longer
unclassified biography of Bonino. Please address your

SIPDIS
request to Mina Mariani, marianim@state.gov.

SEMBLER


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2005ROME00747 - Classification: CONFIDENTIAL