POLAND OPTIMISTIC ON DRAFT UNSCR TEXT ON IRAQ

C O N F I D E N T I A L WARSAW 002433 SIPDIS SIPDIS E.O. 12958: DECL: 11/16/2011 TAGS: PARM PREL UNSC MOPS MARR PL IZ SUBJECT: POLAND OPTIMISTIC ON DRAFT UNSCR TEXT ON IRAQ REF: A. STATE 188677 ¶B. STATE 188249 Classified By: Political Counselor Mary Curtin, reasons 1.4(b) and (d) ¶1. (C) Pol External Chief and British counterpart delivered Ref B points jointly November 20 to Amb. Krzysztof Plominski, Acting Director of the MFA Middle East Africa Department. PolExtChief also took the opportunity to share Ref A text of Secretary Rice's letter to the UNSC President. SIPDIS ¶2. (C) Plominski indicated that the GOP had already received the documents on November 16 from their mission in New York and had analyzed them carefully on both procedure and substance. He noted the importance of building on the precedents of UNSCRs 1546 and 1637, and expressed his government's satisfaction that the mandate was finite and expired on December 31, 2007. Overall, the Polish government was quite pleased with the UNSCR draft. ¶3. (C) Plominski also reacted positively to what he described as "appropriate new elements" in the draft resolution, especially those referring to the changing political situation in Iraq, PM Maliki's National Reconciliation Plan and the International Compact. He opined that it was important from a domestic political perspective to have as much reference as possible to non-military reconstruction and assistance. Plominski thought it would have been better to somehow reflect the "evolution of thinking within the Coalition" with regard to Iraq, especially given the U.S. elections and the activity of the Iraq Study Group, as well as the recent public debate in the UK. However, he acknowledged that these developments had not yet played out and there was no time to take them into account given the need for a new UNSCR well ahead of the New Year. ¶4. (C) With regard to Poland's own political decision-making on the Iraq deployment for 2007, Plominski said that passage of a new UNSCR would leave only one obstacle to the Council of Ministers submitting a formal decision to President Kaczynski: the lack of a formal written request from PM Maliki asking that Polish forces remain in Iraq. He acknowledged that the GOP had received several oral requests from senior Iraqi officials, including from Iraqi NSA Rubai at the October 2006 MNF-I conference in Warsaw. However, the GOI had still failed to provide a written request despite numerous reminders from the most senior levels of the GOP. ASHE