FORUM FOR THE FUTURE: MFA SATISFIED WITH CIVIL

C O N F I D E N T I A L MOSCOW 001977 SIPDIS SIPDIS E.O. 12958: DECL: 04/30/2017 TAGS: PREL KDEM KMPI ECON RS SUBJECT: FORUM FOR THE FUTURE: MFA SATISFIED WITH CIVIL SOCIETY PARTICIPATION REF: STATE 49586 Classified By: A/POL Colin Cleary. Reasons: 1.4(B/D). ¶1. (SBU) We shared reftel message with MFA Middle East Peace Process Section Chief Sergey Kozlov, who has coordinated participation by Russian civil society in the Forum for the Future. Efforts to contact the civil society leaders who attended the Forum were not successful in advance of reftel's reporting deadline. ¶2. (C) Kozlov told us that he was aware of dissatisfaction among non-Russian civil society participants about the lack of movement on reform priorities. He was dismissive, arguing that it was unlikely that the Arab governments attending the Forum would adopt civil society recommendations wholesale; having government representatives even listen to civil society was an important first step. Kozlov said that Russian participants -- the Russian Academy of Science's Institute for Asian and African Studies, the Arab-Russian Business Council, and the St. Andrew the First Called Foundation -- were pleased with the Amman Forum and looked forward to participating in future events. ¶3. (C) Kozlov was worried that the Germans were lagging in their preparation for the next Forum meeting. He noted that by this time last year, the Russians had already scheduled a preparatory committee meeting in May and had shared their planning broadly. He asked that the U.S. press the Germans to move forward on event scheduling, because coming to a consensus on agendas was likely to prove difficult. BURNS