UNESCO: AMBASSADOR GROSS MEETS ADG KHAN

UNCLAS SECTION 01 OF 02 PARIS 000396

SIPDIS

FROM USMISSION UNESCO PARIS
E.O. 12958: N/A

TAGS: KPAO ECPS ETRD ECON EINT ETTC EAID UNESCO
SUBJECT: UNESCO: AMBASSADOR GROSS MEETS ADG KHAN



1. (SBU) SUMMARY: The Coordinator for International
Communications and Information Policy in the Bureau of
Economic and Business Affairs, Ambassador David A.
Gross met with the UNESCO Assistant Director General
for Communication and Information, Abdul Waheed Khan
and Director of the Information Society Division of the
Communication and Information Sector, Elizabeth
Longworth on January 18, 2006 to discuss candidates for
the post World Summit on the Information Society's
(WSIS) Internet Governance Forum's secretariat,
UNESCO's plans for implementation of WSIS Action lines
(Khan discussed only 4 although UNESCO claims
competence in 8.) and other issues including Khan's
upcoming travel to the U.S., the success of UNESCO's
MOUs on ICTs with U.S. companies and USAID and UNESCO
programs designed to encourage capacity building in
developing areas. END SUMMARY.
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The Internet Governance Forum
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2. (SBU) At Tunis, the UN Secretary General was asked
to convene, by the second quarter of 2006, a meeting of
a new forum for multi-stakeholder policy dialogue
called the Internet Governance Forum (IGF). Ambassador
Gross inquired about UNESCO's views on post-WSIS
activities. Khan stated that there were many actors
jockeying for position, among them the UN's Commission
on Science and Technology for Development (CSTP),which
he reported was pushing hard to expand its mandate in
this area. Khan believed that the proposed Global
Alliance for ICT and Development might be created as a
working group within the CSTP. (In conjunction with
the Second Phase of WSIS, the UN ICT Task Force held a
meeting in November 2005 on the concept of becoming a
Global Alliance for ICT and Development.) Gross stated
that he had heard that a proposal on the Global
Alliance might have been sent to the UN's Deputy
Secretary General, but was bounced back after WSIS.

SIPDIS
All agreed that the Global Alliance might be looking
for a new mandate. Ambassador Gross emphasized that
the U.S. was not playing a major role in deciding who
should be the IGF's secretariat, although he noted that
Canada proposed Markus Kumar. Would UNESCO, he asked,
support this? Longworth stated that this would be a
positive step because Geneva was more accessible to the
developing world than other locations, such as New
York. The U.N. in New York, Khan added, always wanted
to do everything and its location might be a negative
optic for the U.S.

3. (SBU) Ambassador Gross was asked who he thought
would be on the IGF's bureau. He urged UNESCO to help
make the forum a "big tent" by getting its own
constituency involved, particularly actors from
developing countries, NGOs and the private sector. He
cautioned that UNESCO's own free flow of information
agenda could otherwise get lost in the larger UN
bureaucracy.
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UNESCO POST WSIS
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4. (SBU) Ambassador Gross emphasized that the US did
not view WSIS as a mandate expander - rather the goal
was for enhanced cooperation among WSIS actors within
existing institutions and mandates. It was not an
expansion of the ITU's - or anyone else's - mandate, he
said. Khan began to describe which WSIS action lines
fall under UNESCO's competency. UNESCO is the sole UN
agency responsible for freedom of expression and the
media under the WSIS plan of action, he said. He
stated that UNESCO was trying to operationalize what
this really means in practice and planned to organize a
multi-stakeholder meeting on the topic for November

2006. The main issue, he stated, was building
capacities. He noted UNESCO's numerous activities in
post-conflict areas in terms of training media
professionals, building community radio and television,
and provided examples of progress in Afghanistan. He
added that he had just received a 4 million dollar
grant from the government of Italy to fund freedom of
expression in the media.

5. (SBU) Ambassador Gross asked Khan whether UNESCO's
primary focus post-WSIS would be on the media side.
Longworth indicated this was a case of triage. Khan
cited 3 of the 8 Action lines mentioning UNESCO:
Ethical dimensions of the information society;
education and ICTs; and cultural and linguistic
diversity. The ethical dimensions action line was to
be split with ECOSOC, but Khan noted that it did not
show signs of active involvement. Ambassador Gross
emphasized that this particular action line gave the
USG substantial pause. Longworth and Khan said the
issue was so large it was hard to know which aspect to
pick. Khan observed that in the past UNESCO has been
"clobbered" on the issue of ethics for media
professionals in particular, and acknowledged that the
term could be a code word for censorship. Khan
preferred the term "high professional standards" to
which Gross quickly added the word "voluntary".
Longworth noted that Khan had had to be very firm on
this issue leading up to the 171st UNESCO Executive
Board in September 2005, but that it continually re-
emerges. For example, she noted that Venezuela would
be asking the Director General about it during his
annual question and answer session for UNESCO Permanent
Representatives on January 19.

6. (SBU) Khan also specifically cited ICTs and
Education as an Action line for UNESCO, but did not
give specifics. When the conversation turned to
cultural and linguistic diversity, Gross noted the
effectiveness of the Internet as a tool for scattered
communities, such as Native Americans, to reconnect
with one another in their native tongue. Longworth
stated that UNESCO had a major work stream on access to
diverse languages in cyberspace. She emphasized that
Communication and Information saw its value added in
the technical aspect (putting languages into digital
form) of promoting cultural and linguistic diversity,
while UNESCO's cultural sector might have a role to
play vis-a-vis cultural diversity. Ambassador Gross
noted recent discussions between the USG and Google on
translation software, among other issues. Putting such
tools, if effective, together with the promotion of non-
ASCII languages could yield a "quantum leap" for
everyone, he stated. He offered USG assistance in
contacting Google to explore these ideas further. Khan
noted that Google was already involved with the World
Digital Library, a project on which the U.S. Librarian
of Congress has reached out to UNESCO. Longworth and
Khan expressed an interest to work with Google at a
high level on these issues along with developing better
search engines, and devising new ways to share
information, especially with regard to making the
bumper crop of new digital libraries interoperable.
UNESCO could be a platform to bring parties together on
these questions, they offered.
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OTHER ISSUES
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7. (SBU) Khan told Ambassador Gross that he plans to
visit the U.S. in April, 2006 and will focus on
increasing awareness of UNESCO's role in WSIS
implementation and its communication development
programs. He also described the progress UNESCO has
made on establishing MOUs with private US firms.

8. (SBU) Longworth noted that UNESCO was hosting a
conference that explores how building Western style
knowledge parks in developing countries can help boost
capacity building on ICTs. Gross and Khan agreed that
the quality of knowledge parks varied greatly. Khan
described one outstanding example in Oman and added
that others in his native India had taken off thanks to
the work of the Secretary of Information Technology,
Shri M. Madhavan Nambiar. Gross described a small but
successful USAID program to promote capacity building
in the Palestinian Authority city of Ramallah. Khan
stated that UNESCO's branch office in Ramallah was
doing a great deal of media and ICT training and
offered to put USAID in touch with this office.

9. (SBU) COMMENT: Khan appears supportive of locating
the Internet Governance Forum in Geneva but seemed
surprised by the idea that UNESCO should encourage its
own constituency to partake in the IGF bureau. Khan
and Longworth indicated that UNESCO is in triage mode
with WSIS implementation - although it claims it has
competency in 8 of the Action lines, it appears to only
be focused on 4: media, ethical dimensions of the
information society, cultural and linguistic diversity
and open content, and education and ICTs. Khan and
Longworth emphasized their work on media freedom with
us since they know we are among its strongest
supporters among UNESCO member states, but were more
cautious on the questions of information ethics and
linguistic diversity, where they emphasized a vaguer
but more technical role. It remains to be seen whether
the worker bees in the Communication and Information
sector receive these messages loudly and clearly -- and
heed them. END COMMENT.
Oliver