AUSTRALIA CONSIDERS NEW ASSISTANCE INITIATIVES FOR IRAQ

UNCLAS BAGHDAD 000014 SIPDIS SIPDIS SENSITIVE E.O. 12958 : N/A TAGS: EAID EFIN EINV ECON ELAB OFDP PREL SOCI IZ XF XU XB AU ZP ZR SUBJECT: AUSTRALIA CONSIDERS NEW ASSISTANCE INITIATIVES FOR IRAQ REF: BAGHDAD 4163 ¶1. (SBU) Summary: Australian Ambassador Innes Brown called on EMIN December 28 to discuss possible areas where Australia could increase its economic assistance to Iraq. The Government of Australia (GoA) has been tasked by PM Rudd to develop new initiatives by the end of January. Innes Brown said that Australia is not interested in further contributions to the UN-World Bank led IRFFI. Australia may be willing to support projects - including co-financing with us or other bilateral donors -- in the fields of health and agriculture (particularly dry land agriculture),as well as training in third countries. End summary. ¶2. (U) EMIN met December 28 with Australian Ambassador to Iraq Mark Innes Brown to discuss economic and assistance opportunities in Iraq. Ambassador Innes Brown said that following his visit to Baghdad (reftel),Australian PM Rudd had asked the Cabinet to examine ways for Australia to do more in economic assistance in Iraq as it withdraws forces. The enhanced assistance plan is to be completed by the end of January. ¶3. (SBU) Innes Brown said the GoA had an unhappy experience with its contributions to IRFFI. Much of the money was chewed up in high UN system overhead charges and there was little transparency or recognition of the contributions. Thus a presumption behind the review is that if Australia does something new for Iraq it will be either of a bilateral character or co-financed with another donor. ¶4. (U) Innes Brown suggested that the GoA is most interested in projects in the fields of health and agriculture, and perhaps some offshore capacity development training, perhaps focused on the Council of Representatives (CoR). He said he anticipated that the GoA would be happy to contribute to "good projects that someone else manages" as long as there is recognition for Australia. ¶5. (U) On health, Ambassador Innes Brown was interested in the possibility of supporting training for basic health care professionals who would work in primary health centers (the U.S. is completing a network of 140 PHC's built with IRRF funds). EMIN noted the U.S. is starting such a project and would arrange for HHS Attache Himmler to provide more details. Ambassador Innes Brown seemed most interested in finding a discrete aspect of this program the Australians could cite as their own, even if managed Qhe U.S. implementing partner. Specialized training delivered off-shore might be such a possibility, since the U.S. intends to deliver basic training in-country. ¶6. (U) The agriculture sector seemed to offer another possibility. Australia provides assistance to the International Center for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas (ICARDA) in Aleppo, Syria. Ambassador Innes Brown said that ICARDA is piloting some drought resistant strains of wheat and barley in Ninewa and Tamim this year. The GoA may want to support more of this work. Ambassador Innes Brown said there were no IPR restrictions on the seedlines developed by ICARDA, as it is Qember of the ConsuQtive Group on International Agricultural Research. He added that the GoA had already decided to support 100 one-year long research fellowships for agricultural scientists in Australia. As Australia also has dry land agricultural challenges, they think this is a good fit for Iraq, and similar to other long-term training funded by Australia in the past. ¶7. (SBU) Finally, Ambassador Innes Brown said the GoA may be interested in doing something additional in the field of ministerial capacity, probably also involving offshore training. The Australian Embassy has already agreed with CoR Speaker Mashadani to send a CoR delegation to Canberra in the summer, focused on issues of federal/state financing. The logic is that since Australia has a parliamentary system in a federal structure, they have something to offer here. ¶8. (U) EMIN tried to interest Ambassador Innes Brown in cooperating on other ongoing U.S. assistance programs, including small and medium sized enterprise credit programs, but found little immediate take-up for those ideas. CROCKER