VCI BUREAU PDAS FORD COMPLIANCE DIPLOMACY

UNCLAS SECTION 01 OF 03 BANJUL 000441 SIPDIS SENSITIVE SIPDIS E.O. 12958: N/A TAGS: PARM KNNP PREL TRGY XA EG SUBJECT: VCI BUREAU PDAS FORD COMPLIANCE DIPLOMACY CONSULTATION WITH EGYPT ¶1. (SBU) SUMMARY: VCI Bureau PDAS Christopher Ford accompanied by Maher Tadros, Office of Nuclear Affairs, and Eric Wong, U.S. Embassy in Addis Ababa, met June 30, 2006 with Egypt's Deputy Assistant Minister of Foreign Affairs Ambassador Taher Farahat in Banjul on the margins of the Summit of the African Union. The purpose of the meeting was to initiate consultative discussions on compliance policy and compliance enforcement approaches. Both sides agreed upon the importance of upholding the credibility of nonproliferation regimes, and that there is a need to improve ways to cooperate in addressing compliance issues. Ambassador Farahat emphasized Egypt's commitment to arms control and nonproliferation and stressed the importance of a Middle East free of weapons of mass destruction (WMD). PDAS Ford emphasized the importance both to international security and to international technology cooperation of ensuring compliance with Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) and other nonproliferation regime rules, and discussed initiatives to enhance peaceful use of nuclear technology, CWC concerns, and lessons learned from past failures to confront noncompliance clearly and effectively. Ford also addressed issues raised by the Egyptian official regarding disarmament progress. Ambassador Farahat invited PDAS Ford for more detailed discussions in Egypt. END SUMMARY. ¶2. (SBU) PDAS Ford gave an overview of the Verification, Compliance, and Implementation Bureau and its missions, emphasizing that the purpose of this consultation was to improve dialogue about how the U.S. and foreign partners can work together to augment the international community's ability to respond to compliance challenges within nonproliferation regimes, and to raise the level of understanding of appreciation for nonproliferation obligations and compliance policy. He noted that although the origins of U.S. verification and compliance policy development lay in bilateral context of U.S.-Soviet geopolitical rivalry, today's nonproliferation challenges are multinational ones that concern all countries and not just the major powers ) and that require all States Party to work together effectively in compliance enforcement. This "democratization" of verification and compliance, he said, meant that all states have a responsibility, individually and collectively, to exercise rigor and diligence in watching for violations, and vigor and fortitude in combating noncompliance. Ford outlined the "internal" and "external" aspects of compliance policy, explaining that the former term refers to the steps a country takes in order to ensure its own compliance (e.g., enacting implementing legislation or making declarations and meeting reporting requirements) while the latter refers to collective efforts to address other countries' inability or refusal to comply with theirs. He pointed out that many countries have good intentions and wish to comply fully, but may need assistance with, for example, drafting legislation, declarations, or progress reports for resolution 1540 compliance. Capacity-building and compliance assistance, Ford explained, can help solve such problems. External challenges due to unwillingness to comply, however, are more troublesome ) and should be a first-order concern of all States Party. Ford emphasized that all countries have a stake in addressing such external compliance challenges in part because the sharing of benefits under nonproliferation regimes can only be assured if all countries comply with rules designed to mitigate the proliferation dangers of sharing technology. Threatening one part of a regime, he told Farahat, threatens the whole regime, and all countries should thus understand their interests in ensuring effective compliance policy not only for security reasons (i.e., preventing neighbors from acquiring weapons of mass destruction) but for technology-sharing reasons (i.e., in support of the benefits of advanced technologies). ¶3. (SBU) Ambassador Farahat emphasized that external challenges vary from region to region. In the Middle East, he said, "one neighboring country" (he clearly meant Israel, but did not say so explicitly) is believed to possess 200 nuclear weapons. Farahat said that instability in the region due to the existence of nuclear, chemical, biological, or even small arms affect all countries there. For this reason, he continued, Egypt's policy for the last 20 years, has been to promote arms control. He said the African Nuclear Weapons Free Zone Treaty, signed in Cairo 40 years ago, is an example of Egypt's approach to arms control, and that conclusion of a BANJUL 00000441 002 OF 003 Middle East WMD-free zone is Egypt's policy and there was a need to bridge the gap between the interests of all states in the region. PDAS Ford replied that the U.S. also believed the Middle East should have no weapons of mass destruction ) neither chemical and biological weapons, nor nuclear ones ) and that this should be achieved within an overall framework for peace. With respect to Farahat's comments about nuclear weapons in a "neighboring country," Ford added that unless the international community is able to ensure by firm compliance enforcement policy that NPT rules are followed, there was little point in worrying about how to bring non-NPT states into the regime. If compliance with Article II of the NPT were in effect made optional, in other words, it would become irrelevant whether or not today's non-parties accede to the Treaty. For this reason, Ford emphasized, he hoped and expected that countries such as Egypt, which worry about alleged WMD programs in non-NPT states such as Israel, would support firm compliance enforcement against NPT violators such as Iran. ¶4. (SBU) Ambassador Farahat voiced concerns that the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC) could have a potentially harmful effect upon a country,s industry. (Note: Egypt has not signed the CWC.) Tadros then pointed out that such concerns had fortunately not been borne out in practice, citing the fact that, with 178 states party to the Treaty, no such complaint has surfaced. To the contrary, Tadros suggested, non-participation in the CWC had the potential to hurt trade in industrial chemicals, because CWC States Party may be less willing to trade with countries not subject to nonproliferation rules and transparency obligations, and because the export of certain chemicals to non States Party is prohibited outright while transfers of another group of chemicals to non-States Party must be reported to the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW). Ford added that this illustrated a broader point about nonproliferation regimes, in that both non-participation and noncompliance inhibit trade and technology-sharing, thus giving the developing world an additional stake in effective regime-promotion and compliance policy. Farahat stated that as a matter of principle Egypt supported the goals of the CWC but due to the situation in the Middle East, with a nuclear neighbor, Egypt should not be penalized twice. ¶5. (SBU) Farahat then returned to the NPT, and argued that requiring the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Additional Protocol (AP) would hurt the integrity of the system as a whole by "raising the bar" for compliance. He stated that peaceful use of nuclear energy is an important pillar of the NPT, but complained that the behavior required in order fully to participate was being raised. Farahat then stated that disarmament (by the nuclear weapons states) is also an important element under the NPT that did not meet Egypt,s expectations because thousands of nuclear warheads remain in existence. ¶6. (SBU) With regard to peaceful uses of nuclear energy, PDAS Ford outlined the nuclear suppliers, recent initiative ) built upon President Bush,s February 2004 nonproliferation initiatives ) to provide reliable fuel supplies for civilian power reactors in conjunction with moves away from enrichment and reprocessing technology. He also said that the AP was an important tool made necessary by lessons learned in the early 1990s. Regarding disarmament under the NPT,, Ford indicated that he was surprised that the Ambassador seemed not to be aware of the dramatic progress that had been made by the U.S. and Russia in moving away from the huge arsenals and confrontational strategic posture of the Cold War. Ford pointed out the progress that had been made in recent years in eliminating many thousands of warheads and hundreds of delivery systems ) including entire classes of system ) and vast swathes of the infrastructure needed to build Cold War nuclear arsenals. He noted that Article VI of the NPT (the disarmament provision) requires good faith negotiations toward disarmament, and said that the United States was proud of its Article VI accomplishments and wished they were more widely understood. Additionally, Ford pointed out that only one P-5 country, China, was still building up its strategic nuclear forces, yet this had elicited not a word of public complaint from the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM). Indeed, he observed, Article VI applied to all NPT States Party, not merely to the nuclear weapons BANJUL 00000441 003 OF 003 powers ) and it spoke not only to disarmament but to the termination of nuclear arms races and the pursuit of general and complete disarmament. Article VI's provision about nuclear arms races, said Ford, underlined the point that countries such as Egypt should join the United States in pursuing effective compliance enforcement policies against violators of NPT Article II, lest new nuclear arms races be created. There was, therefore, a conceptual link between Article II compliance policy and the Article VI obligations of all States Party. Finally, with respect to the danger of regional arms races, Ford reiterated to Farahat that countries such as Egypt which are concerned about possible Israeli nuclear weapons should ensure that others in the Middle East, such as Iran, do not acquire such capabilities. After all, said Ford, the surest way to convince Israel that it must acquire nuclear weapons ) or that it could never give them up once acquired ) would be to permit its hostile neighbors to inaugurate an escalating spiral of nuclear competition in the region. Egypt should thus understand that it has a strong interest in supporting a firm compliance enforcement strategy. ¶7. (SBU) Ambassador Farahat then said that the Iraqi situation had left "a dent" in the verification system leading Egypt to strongly believe in mechanisms such as the IAEA. He went on to emphasize, however, that no country with aggressive intentions should be permitted to acquire WMD. Ford replied that perhaps Iran felt that it had learned a lesson about the ineffectiveness of international compliance enforcement policy when the international community did not react to Iraq's use of chemical weapons against Iran during the Iraq-Iran war. It was thus doubly important, therefore, that the international community respond to today's nonproliferation challenges quickly and firmly. Otherwise, Ford said, tomorrow,s proliferators will also conclude that nonproliferation regimes may indeed be violated at one,s discretion. ¶8. (U) Farahat then described Egypt's approach to Africa's problem with small arms and light weapons (SA/LW). He said Egypt preferred to deprive non-state actors of the need to acquire these arms by actively participating in solving regional issues. This policy was based upon the principle that "where there is a demand there is a supply." Ford replied that he had heard a great deal from African governments about verification and compliance issues related to SA/LW, and appreciated the importance of these issues in the region. ¶9. (U) The discussion concluded with Ambassador Farahat inviting PDAS Ford to visit Egypt for more detailed discussions with experts, and indicating that he will relay the contents of this discussion to Egyptian officials. ¶10. (U) This message has been cleared by VCI Bureau PDAS Christopher Ford. STAFFORD