BRUNEI: MFAT VIEWS ON BILAT ISSUES, APEC

C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 03 BANDAR SERI BEGAWAN 000153 SIPDIS E.O. 12958: DECL: 05/16/2018 TAGS: PREL BX SUBJECT: BRUNEI: MFAT VIEWS ON BILAT ISSUES, APEC Classified By: DCM Justin Friendman, reasons 1.4 (b) & (d) ¶1. (C) SUMMARY: Following topics were covered in discussions with Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade (MFAT) officials occasioned by Ambassador's impending departure: -- Government of Brunei (GOB) support for APEC remains undiminished. APEC Leaders Meetings were the regional meetings the Sultan of Brunei enjoyed most, because the personal interaction among leaders fostered by their relatively informal atmosphere gave APEC a comparative advantage over other groupings such as the EAS. -- The GOB wants to raise bilateral security cooperation to a higher level across the board. One early opportunity might be USG assistance for Royal Brunei Armed Forces efforts to lift relief supplies into Burma. -- GOB shares our interest in seeing Burma open it doors wider for foreign relief commodities and personnel. It has contributed an expert (who participated in the APCSS disaster management seminar held in Brunei last July) to the ASEAN Emergency Response Assessment Team. Foreign Minister I (and Sultan's brother) Prince Mohamed will attend the May 19 meeting in Singapore on Burma disaster response. -- GOB reluctance to finalize an HSPD-6 MOU for sharing terrorist lookout data has been due to concerns about the capacity of the GOB partner agency. MFAT official responsible for HSPD-6 urges USG to keep pushing. -- MFAT is supportive of USG involvement in P-4 negotiations, our campaign to improve IPR protection, and early issuance of title to land for our NEC in Brunei. Although we need to be realistic about scope for progress in specific areas due to GOB capacity restraints and the glacial pace of its decision-making, these conversations do indicate that the GOB interest in further expanding our already good bilateral relations remains undiminished, and if anything is increasing. It appears we can generally count on Brunei to continue to be a friend of the USG within ASEAN and the Islamic world. END SUMMARY. ¶2. (SBU) Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade II Pehin Lim Jock Seng and spouse hosted a farewell dinner at their home for Ambassador and Mrs. Skodon on May 15 in lieu of the customary office farewell call for departing Chiefs of Mission. DCM and a large number of Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade (MFAT) officials with whom we have worked, plus spouses, also attended. Most of the conversation was either social in nature or reflected our Bruneian colleagues' intense interest in the U.S. presidential election campaign. This cable reports substantive portions of discussions with MFAT officials at the dinner or earlier in the day at a palace departure ceremony for the visiting King of Jordan. ¶3. (C) APEC: In response to Ambassador's query over dinner about Government of Brunei (GOB) views of APEC, Pehin Lim said that APEC Leaders Meetings were the multilateral gatherings that Sultan Bolkiah most looked forward to attending. This was due less to the subjects covered than to the relatively informal atmosphere. The Sultan (the only APEC leader to have attended all the Leaders Meetings since their inception) was very comfortable at APEC and felt it afforded a unique opportunity to connect with fellow leaders, including the U.S. President, at a personal level. The Leaders Meetings, Lim said, were just the right size and format for the kind of open give-and-take the Sultan enjoyed. His satisfaction with the current arrangement made the GOB cautious about accepting new members into APEC, which would alter the number of attendees at the Leaders Meetings. ¶4. (C) EAS: Ambassador asked if the East Asia Summit did not offer the same opportunities for the Sultan since many of the same leaders attended that gathering. Pehin Lim replied that the EAS had a much different, more stilted atmosphere. Although its agenda could be worthwhile, the GOB did not see it supplanting APEC because of the unique atmosphere of interaction at the APEC meetings. Permanent Secretary Dato Lim Jock Hoi added that APEC substantive meetings below the leaders level were attractive because their recommendations were not necessarily rules-bound, and so provided an opportunity for trying out new ideas before making formal commitments. ¶5. (C) Security Cooperation: Pehin Lim pulled Ambassador aside before the dinner to say he wanted to "send a signal" about GOB desire to "raise defense cooperation to a higher level." He said the Sultan, MFAT, and Ministry of Defence all shared this intent. Ambassador asked if the GOB was BANDAR SER 00000153 002 OF 003 thinking of strategic policy exchanges or more down-to-earth steps such as training and exercises, and Lim answered "everything." Ambassador told Lim much progress had been made in recent years and we shared the GOB interest in doing even more, but cautioned that there were constraints on both sides due to capacity limitations of the Royal Brunei Armed Forces (RBAF) and the high operations tempos facing the U.S. military. The best way forward might be to build on our mutual good intentions by focusing on specific, concrete opportunities to advance shared interests. Lim agreed and suggested that one such opportunity might be USG assistance to RBAF efforts to move Bruneian relief supplies into Burma. (COMMENT: We have since initiated inquiries with PACOM via DATT and with GOB officials about relevant requirements.) ¶6. (C) Burma Relief: During the dinner, Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade I (and Sultan's brother) Prince Mohamed, who was out of the country, called Lim and asked that he pass on to Ambassador his regrets that his travel schedule would probably preclude a farewell meeting. Lim explained that Mohamed had hoped to meet Ambassador on Monday but instead would represent Brunei at the ASEAN Foreign Minister's meeting on Burma in Singapore. Ambassador expressed the hope that the ASEAN ministers would make a concerted effort to convince the Burmese to open the door to more foreign experts, underscoring that this was a humanitarian issue, not a political one. Lim said Mohamed and the GOB shared that concern and would do what they could to bring the Burmese along. He also confirmed that the GOB had contributed one expert to ASEAN's Emergency Response Assessment Team, but had not received any reports back from him as yet. (NOTE: The GOB ERAT representative is Janaidi Gunong, Superintendent of the Fire and Rescue Department, who participated in the Disaster Management Seminar cosponsored by APCSS which took place in Brunei in July 2007.) ¶7. (C) HSPD-6 Agreement -- The Past: At the palace ceremony for King Abdullah, MFAT Permanent Secretary Dato Shofry apologized to Ambassador that he could not attend Lim's dinner that evening because he had to depart for an OIC meeting. Shofry, who has been MFAT point man for our frustratingly long negotiations on an HSPD-6 MOU for sharing terrorist lookout data, regretted that it had not been possible to conclude such an agreement before Ambassador's departure. Ambassador asked point-blank why Prince Mohamed had not responded to Ambassador's personal request that he authorize signing of the MOU. Dropping his voice to a whisper, Shofry confided that it was because Mohamed and other GOB officials did not have confidence in the capacity of the designated Bruneian partner, the Internal Security Department, to handle the volume of data the USG would provide. Had there been an action-forcing event that required a deliverable, such as a high-level meeting, Shofry thought he could have pushed through an HSPD-6 MOU, but failing that had been unable to overcome his boss's hesitation. ¶8. (C) HSPD-6 Agreement -- The Future: Ambassador assured Shofry we would be flexible about working with ISD, and in any case an action-forcing event was on the horizon in the form of USG requirements for greater data sharing from Visa Waiver Program countries like Brunei. Shofry asked that the next U.S. Ambassador to Brunei mention the continuing USG interest in an HSPD-6 agreement in his introductory calls so that the GOB bureaucracy would realize "It's not just me being a lone loony when I argue for this." ¶9. (C) P-4: Ambassador asked Dato Lim Jock Hoi, MFAT Permanent Secretary in charge of trade issues, his view of USG participation in the Trans-Pacific Strategic Economic Partnership (the "P-4") in which Brunei is a member. Lim said he was quite optimistic regarding USG involvement in the negotiations on the P-4 investment and financial services chapters. In the longer run, he felt that the exploration of more extensive USG involvement would become difficult when it ran up against the vexing issues of agricultural market access, exemplified by the desires of the New Zealand dairy industry to expand market access. ¶10. (C) IPR: DCM found several of the MFAT officials at the dinner aware of the problem posed by poor IPR protection in Brunei, and enthusiastic about the IPR training seminar the Embassy is arranging in June. They were well aware of, and embarrassed by, recent "hidden camera" videos posted on YouTube that clearly show the ease with which counterfeit DVD's and other intellectual property can be purchased at Bruneian shops and the lack of any restraint by shopkeepers in offering counterfeit goods. ¶11. (SBU) NEC: MFAT Deputy Permanent Secretary Mohamed Noor confirmed to Ambassador that the MFAT had given its stamp of BANDAR SER 00000153 003 OF 003 approval to USG purchase of a site for a new Chancery, and had forwarded the necessary paperwork to the Ministry of Development for title issuance. He added that he had asked the Minister of Development to expedite the process of title issuance. (COMMENT: Ambassador and Management Officer raised this issue in Ambassador's farewell call on Minister of Development, who undertook to determine current status of title application and expedite its approval.) ¶12. (C) Comment: The one common thread that ran through all of the discussion with our MFAT colleagues was a desire to improve bilateral relations beyond their already healthy state. It's not difficult to understand why. Small states naturally seek good relations with more powerful states in their own self-interest, and they don't come much smaller than Brunei or more powerful than the U.S. Experience has taught us to temper any optimism about bilateral relations with a dose of reality about the limits imposed by the GOB's restrained capacity and the glacial pace of its decision-making. Nevertheless, it's good to know that in the GOB we have a willing friend and partner on many issues, a situation that it likely to continue for some time to come. End Comment. 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