Identifier
Created
Classification
Origin
06DAMASCUS5302
2006-11-14 14:05:00
CONFIDENTIAL
Embassy Damascus
Cable title:  

ARAB LEAGUE BOYCOTT MEETING - READOUT

Tags:  ABLD ECON KBCT PHUM SY 
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VZCZCXRO8331
OO RUEHAG RUEHBC RUEHDE RUEHKUK RUEHROV
DE RUEHDM #5302 3181405
ZNY CCCCC ZZH
O 141405Z NOV 06
FM AMEMBASSY DAMASCUS
TO RUEHC/SECSTATE WASHDC IMMEDIATE 2450
INFO RUEHEE/ARAB LEAGUE COLLECTIVE
RUCNMEM/EU MEMBER STATES COLLECTIVE
RUEHTV/AMEMBASSY TEL AVIV 1384
RUEATRS/DEPT OF TREASURY WASHDC
RUCPDOC/DEPT OF COMMERCE WASHDC
C O N F I D E N T I A L DAMASCUS 005302 

SIPDIS

SIPDIS

NEA/RA FOR NEA/ELA, EB, L, COMMERCE/BIS/OAC, USTR

E.O. 12958: DECL: 11/08/2016
TAGS: ABLD ECON KBCT PHUM SY
SUBJECT: ARAB LEAGUE BOYCOTT MEETING - READOUT

Classified By: CDA Michael Corbin for reasons 1.4 b/d

Ref: Damascus 2341

C O N F I D E N T I A L DAMASCUS 005302

SIPDIS

SIPDIS

NEA/RA FOR NEA/ELA, EB, L, COMMERCE/BIS/OAC, USTR

E.O. 12958: DECL: 11/08/2016
TAGS: ABLD ECON KBCT PHUM SY
SUBJECT: ARAB LEAGUE BOYCOTT MEETING - READOUT

Classified By: CDA Michael Corbin for reasons 1.4 b/d

Ref: Damascus 2341


1. (U) Summary. The semi-annual meeting of the Arab League
Boycott Office (ALBO) was held November 6-9 in Damascus, with
representation from the same 14 countries that attended the
last meeting in May 2006 (ref A). Some participants feel the
semi-annual conference has outlived its usefulness and will
fade away if progress is made on the peace process. A
minority view continues to insist the meeting is necessary if
only for the political statement it makes. Reports after the
fact showed it to be lackluster and nothing new came out of
it. End Summary.


2. (C) Information from contacts confirms that the following
countries were represented at the semi-annual three day
meeting of the Arab League Boycott committee: Algeria, Iraq,
Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, Morocco, the Palestine Authority,
Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Syria, Tunisia, UAE and Yemen.
Information from contacts confirms these attendees. Most
states were represented at the working level by their local
embassies; our contact at the Kuwait embassy, however,
confirmed that his government sent two working-level Customs
officials, and went on to report that UAE sent a
working-level delegation from Abu Dhabi, which conflicted
with the information we were getting from the UAE embassy
prior to the meeting.


3. (C) EconOff met with local representatives of several
Arab League member countries before and after the ALBO
meetings. Contacts said before the meeting that they
expected turnout to be moderate and actual implementation of
any decisions to be low. Based on readouts, the conference
was as lackluster as anticipated. Discussions ran along the
&usual8 lines, with the loudest calls to action from Syria,
the Palestinian Authority and Libya; the loudest objections
from Saudi Arabia; and the loudest silence from North Africa.



4. (C) The camp of participants who feel that the ALBO has
outlived its usefulness includes Tunisia, whose resident
econoff commented to us on the eve of the conference that the
Arab boycott is especially irrelevant in the modern global
economy. He offered the example of Nestle, which does
business with Israel but also has a plant in Syria;
boycotting Nestle would therefore cost Syrian jobs, and how
does that help? The ALBO is & ( a waste of my time and (
I wrote this to Tunis,8 he said. Nasser al Qahtani of the
Kuwait Embassy noted that attendance at ALBO meetings
historically can be strongly influenced by political events;
if the Israeli-Hizbollah conflict were more recent, he said,
attendance would be higher and more vocal. Concerns about
future attendance reportedly prompted the local ALBO chief to
tell this year,s participants that he views Djibouti and
Somalia,s future involvement to be important to the
meeting,s continued viability.


5. (C) Comment. Contacts at Arab embassies felt the ALBO
was an organization in the sunset of its life, especially
given the global nature of business today. Uniformly, their
countries attend the meetings but do not implement the
secondary and tertiary elements of the boycott. In the end,
the ALBO remains relegated to being a forum that allows a few
die-hard countries to let off steam, yet permitting some Arab
confreres to maintain business ties with Israel without
losing face.
CORBIN