DEMOCRACY FORUM: LEBANESE PRESIDENT AND SYRIAN

C O N F I D E N T I A L DOHA 000420 SIPDIS E.O. 12958: DECL: 04/23/2017 TAGS: PREL PGOV KDEM LE SY QA SUBJECT: DEMOCRACY FORUM: LEBANESE PRESIDENT AND SYRIAN MINISTER PROVIDE "BALANCE" REF: A. DOHA 286 ¶B. 06 DOHA 571 Derived from: DSCG 05-1, B,D. ¶1. (U) The Amir of Qatar, Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani, opened the seventh annual Forum on Democracy, Development, and Free Trade April 23 with a speech that focused on the need for democratic reforms in the Arab region. He described a "sort of lassitude" in Arab movement toward reform in the region. He said it would be a "mistake" for domestic reform efforts to be driven by or react to "messages coming from abroad." Some in the West have "slackened" in their support for democracy, he said, but that should not be dissuasive. He argued that "political reform is correlated to the success of social reform," and that Qatar has paid "great attention" to the latter. ¶2. (U) UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon also spoke at the opening ceremony. High-level government officials from the Arab region, in particular, are participating in the forum, which ends April 25. Senior officials include Arab League Secretary General Amre Moussa; Lebanese President Emile SIPDIS Lahoud; Syrian Foreign Minister Waleed Moallem; the Bahraini, Kuwaiti, and Moroccan foreign ministers; the Minister of State for Foreign Affairs from the UAE; and the President of Finland, who has been in Doha for several days. ¶3. (C) On the presence of Lahoud and Moallem, who are not the Arab region's strongest advocates of democracy, an advisor in the Amiri Diwan said that many of the Arab leaders had "asked" for invitations. He said that Lahoud was attending the conference only as an add-on to his recently-completed state visit to Qatar. The Qatari advisor complained that the Qatari embassy in Washington had not done an adequate job of recruiting American participants. He noted that Senator John McCain had cancelled at the last minute, and several other VIPs with him. "Arab officials want to come. If we had invited President Bush or Secretary Rice, they wouldn't have come," he concluded. ¶4. (C) An Arab ambassador participating in the forum said that Lahoud and Moallem's participation should not be considered unusual. "Qatar is seen as a place where one can have an open discussion," he said. He believed that this served a useful purpose, and commented that Qatar does not have the political weight to encourage reforms beyond discussions at the forum. ¶5. (SBU) Some participants in and observers at the forum believe that the final communique will include a call for more specific reforms in the Arab region. This would mark a "phase two" after six years of discussion. Contacts pointed to the concentration of Arab officials, as opposed to private participants or former officials, as evidence that a change was afoot. -------------- Comment -------------- ¶6. (C) The Qatari official's claim that Lebanese President Lahoud's presence was an afterthought to his state visit does not ring true. Though the state visit balances PM Siniora's trip to Qatar earlier in the year, it is more likely that he was an original invited guest. The participation of both Lahoud and Moallem reflects Qatar's regional politics, which is to maintain ties across the political spectrum and to keep Syria in the mainstream of Arab politics. Qatar's aim in so doing is to secure a role for itself in Middle East politics as a channel to these "bad actors." Qatar aslo desires to counter Saudi influence wherever possible. UNTERMEYER