DUTCH MFA ON U.S. AMENDMENTS TO THE SUA

C O N F I D E N T I A L THE HAGUE 000167 SIPDIS DEPARTMENT FOR NP/RA EYTHAN SONTAG, L/NP JULIE HERR, L/LEI DENISE MANNING E.O. 12958: DECL: 01/23/2015 TAGS: KNNP MNUC PARM PREL KTIA PHSA EWWT NL SUBJECT: DUTCH MFA ON U.S. AMENDMENTS TO THE SUA REF: A. STATE 4828 ¶B. DEAN-SONTAG/HERR/MANNING EMAILS 1/21 AND PREVIOUS (NOTAL) Classified By: CLASSIFIED BY POLITICAL COUNSELOR ANDREW SCHOFER FOR REA SONS 1.4 (B AND D) ¶1. (C) PolMilOff made ref A demarche to MFA Nonproliferation Affairs Chief Paul Wilke and MFA Deputy Director of Juridical Affairs Liesbeth Lijnzaad on January 11 and followed up with Lijnzaad on January 21. As reported preliminarily ref B, Wilke said that in general, the Netherlands shares U.S. concerns and wants to see the SUA Convention used as intended, but suggested there are "legal and political" complications. Lijnzaad expressed concern about the time available to have a text ready for the October diplomatic conference on the SUA. She thought a compromise was possible on the issue of state vs. non-state actors. However, the dual-use issue was "extremely complicated" in terms of linking certain control lists like the Australia Group to the SUA. This is because not all states party to the SUA are participants in political arrangements like the AG. Wilke noted that even if it is possible to get states not party to the AG and other such lists to agree, a mechanism would be needed to reflect that the lists are regularly updated or else they would be frozen in the form that they are appended to the SUA. Lijnzaad said that another problem was that not many large registry countries are currently part of the drafting process. ¶2. (C) Lijnzaad said she would chair the January 17 EU COMAR meeting instead of current EU presidency holder Luxembourg as Luxembourg was not a maritime state. In a January 21 follow-up discussion (also reported preliminarily ref B), Lijnzaad told PolMilOff that at the COMAR meeting, EU members did not disagree with the substance of U.S. proposals but were "quite concerned" at their coming "so late in the process." Lijnzaad said members were worried that if they were to reopen the discussion now they could "wind up nowhere." She opined that the effort would be of limited utility if it only attracted the support of the PSI partners. She also noted that her fellow COMAR members were guided in their views by a certain sympathy for the "incredible" amount of work that their French colleague had invested in drafting the current language on Footnote 14 addressing the areas the U.S. seeks to amend. SOBEL