USOSCE AMBASSADOR FINLEY PUSHES FAIR ELECTIONS,

C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 02 YEREVAN 001565 SIPDIS SIPDIS DEPT FOR EUR/CARC, EUR/ACE, EUR/RPM, DRL E.O. 12958: DECL: 10/19/2011 TAGS: PREL PGOV PHUM KDEM OSCE AM SUBJECT: USOSCE AMBASSADOR FINLEY PUSHES FAIR ELECTIONS, MEDIA FREEDOM, AND TIP IN ARMENIA Classified By: Pol/Econ chief Steve Banks, reasons 1.4 (b,d) ¶1. (C) SUMMARY: Julie Finley, US Ambassador to the OSCE, visited Armenia October 17-19, and met a wide range of GOAM officials and non-governmental contacts. While they embraced her strong messages on free and fair elections, media freedom, trafficking in persons (TIP),and anti-corruption, officials were not as forthcoming as we would have liked on enacting promptly the new Election Code or inviting ODIHR now to observe the 2007 Parliamentary elections. While NGO reps doubted the government's good intentions, Ambassador Finley repeatedly stressed that she would hold officials to their word. In meetings with officials from the OSCE Office, Finley discussed program and budget priorities. She also visited a model OSCE rocket fuel reprocessing site. END SUMMARY ¶2. (U) SCHEDULE: During her 3-day visit, Ambassador Finley's meetings included government, opposition, civil society, media representatives, and officials from the OSCE Office, including: Acting Prime Minister/Minister of Territorial Administration Hovik Abrahamyan Justice Minister Davit Harutyunian National Assembly Speaker Tigran Torosyan Armenian Delegation to the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly: - Deputy N.A. Speaker Vahan Hovanisian, and - MP Samvel Nikoyan Prosecutor General Agvhan Hovsepyan Deputy Foreign Ministers Armen Baiburtian (OSCE) and Arman Kirakosian (U.S. Relationship) Central Election Commission Chairman Garegin Azaryan First Deputy Commander of the National Police Service LTG Ararat Mahtesian Human Rights Ombudsman Armen Harutyunian Ambassador Pryakin, Head of the OSCE Office. ¶3. (C) ELECTIONS: Ambassador Finley repeatedly urged Armenian officials to update voter lists and pass its revised Election Code promptly so that politicians, election officials, and civil society can each make the necessary preparations based on known ground rules. She strongly pressed officials to invite OSCE/ODIHR soon, to make both long and short-term observer missions possible for Armenia's May 2007 parliamentary elections. (NOTE: Pressing for an early invitation to ODIHR is to help avoid GOAM foot-dragging that could stymie ODIHR's organization of a full election monitoring program, including a long-term observation team. END NOTE). GOAM officials were consistent and unequivocal in their commitment to conducting free and fair elections. While GOAM interlocutors insisted that observers from the OSCE's Office of Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR) would "of course be invited," they revealed a tendency to foot-dragging by offering several domestic legal/procedural excuses for not issuing a formal GOAM invitation until after the election date was formally announced and the new election code passed. Arguing in favor of ODIHR's support mechanisms, Finley pointed out that elections were not simply about election day but also about the lead-up period, which must feature an environment conducive to political activity and media expression. National Assembly Speaker Tigran Torosian predicted that final passage could not come before December because he believed Parliament had to resubmit the draft to the Council of Europe's Venice Commission and ODIHR for a second round of review and comment. Ambassador Finley questioned the need for resubmission and urged the GOAM to choose the most practical and efficient course to getting a workable code in place as soon as possible. ¶4. (C) TRAFFICKING IN PERSONS (TIP): Ambassador Finley's opening remarks at an OSCE-sponsored training seminar on Trafficking in Persons urged Armenia to beef up its anti-trafficking efforts in order to graduate from the Tier 2 Watch List and to avoid any risk of slipping down to Tier 3 status. She emphasized these points with the Foreign Ministry and the Prosecutor General. DFM Baiburtian shared the welcome news that the government plans to upgrade its inter-agency anti-TIP coordination group to a more senior level, to be chaired by a cabinet minister. He said that Armenia's new anti-TIP action plan, due to take effect January 1, would intensify GOAM efforts. He pointed out that Armenia's lack of diplomatic relations with Turkey seriously impeded the investigation of TIP crimes that involved trafficking Armenians into Turkey. ¶5. (C) MEDIA FREEDOM: In a round table with a selection of local journalists and media-related NGOs, Ambassador Finley YEREVAN 00001565 002 OF 002 advocated media freedom as a necessary component for free and fair elections. The journalist/NGO interlocutors were overall quite gloomy about the media environment in Armenia, pointing out that especially the local broadcast media practice self-censorship for fear that criticism of the government will prompt them to revoke their licenses, as happened to the independent A1-plus network. Several complained that the private broadcasters' ownership groups were both overly friendly to the government and quite profitable, factors that leave them disinclined to discomfit authorities by airing provocative political coverage. ¶6. (C) CORRUPTION: The OSCE Office organized a roundtable discussion with the local NGO partners in its anti-corruption working group. Ambassador Finley was particularly struck by the reports of rampant petty corruption in the ranks of Armenia's traffic police. This prompted her to emphasize in her subsequent meetings with GOAM interlocutors, most pointedly with National Police Deputy Commander Ararat Mahtesian, that honest law enforcement is a cornerstone of democratic governance. Mahtesian sheepishly acknowledged the seriousness of the problem and said he had been appointed the GOAM's point person on an inter-agency commission to combat corruption in law enforcement. He offered the hope that by the time of Ambassador Finley's next visit to Yerevan, he would be able to report that the problem had been eliminated. ¶7. (C) OSCE BUSINESS: In her meeting at the OSCE Office, Ambassador Pryakin lobbied Ambassador Finley to support his proposed 2007 increased budget, arguing that cuts to the "lean program would put him in a terribly awkward position" considering the prominence of police assistance programs, democratization and trafficking support efforts, the Aarhus environmental center, and the new economic development office in the south of the country. Ambassador Finley visited a US-supported, flagship OSCE project site where tons of Soviet-era melange rocket fuel is converted to fertilizer. In her bilateral meetings with the MFA and with the National Assembly's OSCE PA delegation, Ambassador Finley foreshadowed US receptivity on several of Russia's reform proposals for ODIHR. Armenia's OSCE Parliamentary Assembly delegation was quite receptive to Ambassador Finley's hope for closer cooperation in the future among the OSCE Secretariat, the Permanent Council, and the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly. ¶8. (C) OPPOSITION POLITICIANS: At an embassy-organized discussion, leading opposition politicians reacted cynically to Ambassador Finley's public comments that she was prepared to assume the GOAM's good faith, unless shown reason to do otherwise. Ambassador Finley urged opposition politicians -- both those present and those absent -- to unify around a few agreed themes in order to have any chance of winning power at the ballot box. Several suggested openly that people should come out onto the streets in mass protest after the official election results are announced, presuming they will be falsified. Both she and CDA Godfrey cautioned against a "color revolution reaction in Armenia," reaffirming that the United States supports democratic "evolution, not revolution". One of the attendees, Vazgen Manukian (formerly Prime Minister and now head of the opposition National Democratic Union) told a press conference the next day that "the West" would not back any kind of opposition uprising in Armenia. ¶9. (C) COMMENT: In her meetings with senior government interlocutors during this pre-election season, Ambassador Finley reinforced key US messages when she lay down similar OSCE markers on the Election Code, OSCE/ODIHR election observers, trafficking in persons, media freedom and corruption. ¶10. (U) Ambassador Finley has cleared this cable. GODFREY