DRC NATIONAL SECURITY COUNSELOR ON JOINT PLANNING

C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 02 KINSHASA 001213

SIPDIS

SIPDIS

E.O. 12958: DECL: 10/18/2017
TAGS: PGOV PREL PINR MOPS CG
SUBJECT: DRC NATIONAL SECURITY COUNSELOR ON JOINT PLANNING
CELL, JOINT VERIFICATION COMMISSION, TRIPARTITE FUSION CELL

REF: A. KINSHASA 926

B. KINSHASA 1175

C. KINSHASA 1177

D. E-MAIL FROM COL. RICHARD ORTH

E. AF/RSA

F. TO DATT LTC. SCOTT BRYSON

G. 9/24/2007

Classified By: CDA S. Brock. Reasons 1.4 (b/d).


1. (C) Summary. Cesar Fwani (protect),the DRC's National
Security Council (CNS) expert on Tripartite Plus issues, is
unimpressed with the concept of grafting a Joint Planning
Cell (JPC) onto the existing Tripartite Plus Intelligence
Fusion Cell (TFC) but very enthusiastic about the renewal of
the DRC-Rwanda Joint Verification Commission (JVC). He
has no set position on U.S. participation in the JVC. He
expressed exasperation about the relative inertia of the TFC
and questioned the value of expanding its mandate. Embassy
will analyze the various viewpoints and forward potential
strategies for improving the TFC's performance septel. End
summary.


2. (C) Cesar Fwani (protect),counselor to the DRC's
National Security Council (CNS),reviewed September 20
meetings of the Tripartite Plus Joint Planning Cell (JPC)
in Kisangani, and the DRC-Rwanda Joint Verification
Commission (JVC) in Goma, with PolOff September 27. Fwani,
who oversees the DRC's focal point office for the TFC, has
been consistently accommodating and cordial in relations with
the Embassy. He served as deputy counselor to Samba Kaputo,
the previous National Security Advisor who died unexpectedly
in July (ref A).

Joint Planning Cell
--------------


3. (C) Fwani was unimpressed with the concept of grafting a
JPC onto the existing TFC and seemed content to leave this
initiative to die on the vine. He had copies of all of the
documents generated at the Kisangani meeting, and was polite
but dismissive about the plans for making the TFC subordinate
to a yet-undefined multilateral Planning Cell. He expressed
frank skepticism about the operational impact of multilateral
working groups, claiming that the larger they become, the
more unwieldy and the less effective they are. He was fairly
negative about multilateral initiatives in general, opining
that as the groups got larger, real interaction and
collaboration diminished.

Joint Verification Commission
--------------


4. (C) By contrast, Fwani was very enthusiastic about the
Goma meeting and the resultant renewal of the Joint
Verification Commission. He stated that bilateral
cooperation was almost always preferable to larger groups; he
cited the joint verification teams along the Rwanda-DRC
border as an example of progress. He stated that he would
like to see more efforts to develop this sort of bilateral
effort, both with Rwanda and with Uganda. He said that they
would be more direct, more targeted, and more immediate than
remote-based multilateral efforts, and more likely to result
in a reduction of negative forces. He was also aware of --
and appreciative of -- the positive role that MONUC played in
these bilateral efforts. Although he knew that the Goma
meeting called for U.S. participation in the JVC, he did not
know what shape this would take.

Tripartite Fusion Cell (TFC)
--------------


5. (C) Fwani expressed exasperation about the relative
inertia of the TFC. He stated that Samba Kaputo had never
seen the value of the project and had politely distanced
himself from it. Fwani understood the original concept as a
confidence-building measure, but questioned the value of
continuing to pour resources into a project which had not
progressed beyond its current level of achievement. He noted
that the cell had been operational for 20 months, yet "had
not made any impact in relation to negative forces."
He stated that he had been given responsibility to work with
it and would "do his duty," but doubted that anything useful
-- i.e., operational intelligence products -- would
ever emerge.


KINSHASA 00001213 002 OF 002



6. (C) He divided the TFC initiative into two distinct
elements. First, he said if the goal was to have former
enemies sit down together and talk, it has already served its
purpose. Second, he reiterated that the current
configuration would never result in any sort of shared intel.
He noted the huge gap between "information" and
"intelligence," and stated that without its own agents on the
ground, the best the TFC could ever do would be to collect
information from others -- and he questioned the value of
expending all this effort to collect information that was
neither timely nor actionable.


7. (C) Fwani was well informed about the TFC's operational
challenges, noting various absences of delegates and the
presence of junior officers sent by other governments. He
was also well-versed about the unwillingness of delegates to
put any actual intel on the table. He characterized the TFC
as "theater" which would never produce intel -- or even
specific information in a timely enough manner to make it
useful in an operational sense.

Comment
--------------


9. (C) Calls at the recent Chiefs of Defense meeting in
Lubumbashi to increase the mandate of the TFC (refs B & C)
sidestep the issue of whether the cell, as is, is functional.
Although it is clear, in ref D's characterization, that "the
current configuration doesn't work," Fwani's exasperation
with the TFC is more than a bit
disingenuous. While, at this moment, the CNS seems mired in
inertia in the absence of a new director, and Fwani's access
to Kabila and influence is unclear, if it truly
wanted to provide intel to the TFC, the CNS clearly has the
capacity. This illustrates the fundamental challenge to
making the TFC more effective -- the unwillingness of all
Tripartite Plus governments to put real intelligence on the
table. In light of Fwani,s assessment, and because of new
information obtained on a recent trip to TFC,s Kisangani
office by Charge and ORA, post will formulate recommendations
on ways to improve TFC via septel. End comment.
BROCK