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

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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