IRAQ-IRAN BORDER NEGOTIATIONS TO MOVE AHEAD - MAYBE

C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 03 BAGHDAD 002981

SIPDIS

E.O. 12958: DECL: 09/11/2018
TAGS: PREL PGOV PBTS IZ IR
SUBJECT: IRAQ-IRAN BORDER NEGOTIATIONS TO MOVE AHEAD - MAYBE

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Classified By: Ambassador Ryan C. Crocker for reasons 1.4 (b) and (d).

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Summary
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1. (C) Iraq and Iran appear ready to commence work soon to
resolve outstanding border issues, assuming PM Maliki and
other key GOI constituencies give the political green light
and make available necessary funding. Senior MFA officials
who participated in late-August bilateral talks in Tehran
said the two sides had agreed to follow up with a series of
meetings to begin in November at the ambassadorial and
experts level. The 1975 Algiers agreement was a contentious
issue in the discussions: the Iraqis do not to want the
now-abrogated Agreement, which acknowledged Iran's right to
the Shatt al-Arab to the thalweg, to serve as the sole basis
for current discussions; the Iranians were adamant that it
must.
According to one version of the recent talks, only the
personal
intervention of Vice President Adel Abdul Mehdi persuaded the
Iranians to accept a compromise. The sides are now
proceeding
using "previous agreements" as the publicly acceptable point
of
reference for their talks. The green light in Baghdad for
detailed
negotiations is not a sure thing, and a successful conclusion
to
any such talks is also far from assured. End summary.

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Iran-Iraq Border Negotiations
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2. (C) An Iraqi MFA team led by Deputy Foreign Minister
Haj Hmoud visited Tehran in late August to continue
bilateral efforts, begun in early 2008, to resolve
outstanding border issues. In a September 10 readout to
Poloffs, MFA Neighboring Countries Director Taha al-Abassi
characterized the discussions as a "tug of war among the
negotiators." A key focus of the talks was the apparent
shift of the thalweg, the line of the deepest point of a
water channel (in this case the Shatt al-Arab) which had,
under the 1975 Algiers Agreement, served as the maritime
boundary.


3. (C) A non-expert, Al-Abassi claimed that natural
movement of mud and sediment has shifted the thalweg.
These natural changes, he said, have been compounded by
Iraq's (during the Saddam regime) removal of ships sunk
during the Iran-Iraq war from the Iraqi side of the thalweg
with no reciprocal Iranian removal, which resulted in
greater quantities of water flowing into and through Iraqi
territory. This, in turn, led the channel (and the
thalweg) to shift west, resulting in the loss of "hundreds
of square kilometers" of Iraqi land.


4. (C) Continuing, Al-Abassi asserted that the shifting of
the channel has resulted in a number of Iraqi ports in the
Shatt al-Arab now being on the Iranian side of the
thalweg. Al-Abassi noted that compounding this situation
is the fact that, over the years, many border markers were
either lost, destroyed or moved (he claimed by the
Iranians),particularly in areas where there are petroleum
deposits.

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Algiers Agreement Sensitivities
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5. (C) Al-Abassi said the Iraqi team's instructions were
to ensure that the Algiers Agreement was not the sole point
of reference for the border negotiations. (Note: In the
Algiers Agreement, signed in 1975 between Saddam and the
Shah, Iraq acknowledged Iran's right to half the Shatt
al-Arab in exchange for Tehran's cessation of its support
for Kurdish rebels battling Saddam's regime. End note.)
He highlighted two constituencies in particular that feel
strongly about this: the Kurds, who are still bitter about
the Agreement's reference to them as an "outlaw"
population, and Iraqi nationalists, who never accepted
Saddam's decision to recognize Iranian rights on the Shatt
al-Arab and continue to view the entire area as Iraqi
territory.


6. (C) Al-Abassi said the MFA is still awaiting guidance
from the Prime Minister regarding the extent to which the
Algiers Agreement will guide the ongoing discussions. He
recounted that during the first round of talks in early
2008, the Iranian side, recognizing Iraqi domestic
sensitivities, agreed not to insist on or mention publicly

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direct references to Algiers. However, when the Iraqi
delegation arrived in Tehran for the second round, the
Iranians reversed their position and were again insisting
that Algiers be the basis for the border discussions. The
Iraqi team told the Iranians that this was unacceptable,
and proposed as an alternative to make general references
to "previous agreements." Al-Abassi noted that "there are
plenty of previous agreements on this, dating back to the
Ottomans."


7. (C) Iranian Foreign Minister Mottaki rejected this
compromise solution outright. The Iraqi delegation then
sought the intervention of Prime Minister Maliki and
Foreign Minister Zebari; both were unavailable. They were,
however, able to reach Vice President Adel Abdul Mehdi who,
using his long-standing, close connections in Tehran ("you
Americans know all about these," Al-Abassi said) to
intervene. In Al-Abassi's account, the Iranians relented
following Abdul Mehdi's intervention, again accepting the
general reference to "previous agreements."


8. (C) In a separate meeting September 11 with Senior
Advisor Gray, Deputy Foreign Minister Hmoud, who led the
Iraqi negotiating team, offered a somewhat different
account of the negotiating dynamic, portraying the Iranians
in a less flexible light. Iran, Hmoud said, was insistent
on Iraq recognizing the Algiers Agreement as a basis of
negotiations. "Practically, what could we do," Hamoud
asked rhetorically, saying this was not the right time to
resort to force or "call out the army". "We had to
negotiate." Hmoud explained that he had drafted a
memorandum for the Foreign Minister urging Iraq to put the
years of war with Iran behind it and to "turn a new page"
with Iran. When Hmoud agreed to accept the Algiers
Agreement (upon instructions) as a basis for future
discussions under the formulation of "previous agreements",
the Iranians "agreed with everything after that."

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Next Steps
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9. (C) According to Al-Abassi, the follow-up to the
August discussions will be a series of bilateral meetings
at the expert and Ambassadorial levels, tentatively set to
commence in November. This will include a "High Level
Commission" to oversee the process, an "Experts Commission"
that will focus on the technical aspects of border
demarcation, and 11 regional border commissions each with
responsibility for specific parts of the border, including
one dedicated to the Shatt al- Arab. Representatives from
the Ministries of Defense (clearing landmines is a big
issue),Interior (to coordinate on security),Oil, Water
Resources and others will participate in the expert
discussions. The High Level Commission is to kick off the
process with a meeting at the ambassadorial level in the
Iranian port city of Khoramshah on November 2, after which
the Experts Commission's first order of business will be to
conduct a comprehensive review" of the facts that they
will present to the High Level Commission at the
undersecretary level in January or February.


10. (C) Concurrent with this, the 11 regional border
commissions are also supposed to begin meeting to discuss
issues specific to their region. Deputy Foreign Minister
Hmoud added that as a result of the Tehran discussions,
Iraq agreed to send a team to live and work across the
border in Iran where construction will begin on physical
border crossing structures. Dealing with land border
issues has been easier, he noted, because of long standing
agreements between Iran and Iraq dating as far back 1913.
In the Shaat al-Arab, however, the shifting thalweg made
the issue more difficult to resolve.

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A Multi-Year Effort Requiring International Expertise
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11. (C) To rectify the changes in the Shatt al-Arab that
have taken place since 1975, both Al-Abassi and Hmoud told
us (separately) that the underlying principle would not be
to negotiate equitable exchange of parcels of land, but
rather to shift the channel -- and the thalweg -- back to
where it was in 1975. Iraqi technical experts assert that
this is doable, but will require significant resources,
three to four years of effort, and the recognized expertise
of prominent international engineering firms. Assuming the
Experts Committee commences its work later in the year,
this almost certainly will be a topic of discussion.

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But Political Green Light and Funding Still Needed
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12. (C) Al-Abassi cautioned that the plan outlined above
is contingent on the MFA receiving Prime Ministerial
approval to go forward. Allocation of necessary funding
and development of a mechanism to disburse these funds by
the Prime Minister's office are also critical. Al-Abassi
appeared guardedly optimistic that this would happen,
perhaps within the next two weeks, but qualified his
comment by noting that "things move very slowly in our
Government." He also reiterated strong internal political
opposition to any bilateral negotiations that could be
interpreted as recognizing any Iranian rights to the Shatt
al-Arab.

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Comment
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13. (C) The underlying truth of the dynamics and
motivations of both Iraq and Iran on this issue is about as
clear as the mud shifting in the Shatt al-Arab. It is
unclear whether both sides (or either) truly want a
settlement of border issues or only the appearance of
seeking to cooperate. The combination of strong
nationalist sentiment, lingering bitterness among the Kurds
about the circumstances that led to the Algiers Agreement
in the first place, and the ever present factor of oil
leaves open the question of how the border rectification
process will proceed. If Al-Abassi is correct, we should
know shortly if the mechanisms as agreed in Tehran at the
end of August will begin. Assessing whether this process
may actually lead to a settlement of outstanding claims and
resolve the border issues once and for all will take
longer. End comment.
CROCKER