U.S. Wins Concessions on UNESCAP 64th Commission Session

UNCLAS BANGKOK 001425 SIPDIS SENSITIVE E.O. 12958: N/A TAGS: EAID ENRG UN IR CH IN KS JA PK RS AS XB SUBJECT: U.S. Wins Concessions on UNESCAP 64th Commission Session Resolutions ¶1. (SBU) Summary. The United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (UNESCAP) held its 64th annual commission session in Bangkok April 22-30. This year's theme was "Energy Security and Sustainable Development in Asia and the Pacific." After several days (and nights) of negotiations, nine resolutions were passed by consensus, calling for the Commission to take action on topics from road transport to renewable energy technology. A resolution was also passed on reform of the conference structure that shortens the conference from nine days to seven and takes other steps to streamline operations. Iran withdrew from consideration this year its resolution that proposed establishing a disaster management center in Tehran. On virtually all key points, the U.S. worked with Japan, South Korea, and Australia to win needed concessions. End Summary ¶2. (SBU) Membership in UNESCAP comprises 53 countries of the vast Asia Pacific region from Azerbaijan to Australia, plus four extra-regional members (the United States, the United Kingdom, France, and the Netherlands). In practice, very active participation in the proceedings, and especially negotiations over the resolutions, has been limited to a handful of countries. Over the past year at the monthly meetings of the Advisory Committee of Permanent Representatives (ACPR),and then subsequently at the annual Commission session held in Bangkok April 22-30, the most active countries have been Russia, China, Japan, Korea, India, Pakistan, and Iran and the U.S. Australia has also become more vocal recently. ¶3. (SBU) Negotiations over the text of the resolutions at the commission session were almost exclusively confined to the nine countries mentioned above, with predictable fault lines. Japan, Korea, and Australia tended to adhere to positions similar to those of the United States, especially on resolutions concerning financing the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and technology transfer. On these same issues, India and Pakistan led the developing country bloc. Russia and China were somewhere in between, with Russia leaning more toward the wealthy countries' position and China leaning more toward the developing countries' position on most issues. ¶4. (SBU) The Commission passed a resolution on Reform of the Conference Structure. Notably, the resolution reduced the number of 
days of future commission sessions from nine to seven. This was a compromise solution reached after Korea, the United States, Japan, and Australia expressed support for reducing the commission session to five days, and Russia and Iran supported retaining it at nine days. The UNESCAP Secretariat claimed that reducing the commission session to less than seven days would have budgetary implications due to work requirements of translators. The Secretariat also undoubtedly preferred the more stretched-out schedule to give more time for document translation and preparation between meetings. The countries that supported reducing the number of days of the session to five pointed out that it would reduce the burden on traveling delegations and overall would have to cost less than a nine day session. The resolution imposed a limit on the number of ACPR meetings to 12 per year to avoid increasing the budget. The resolution also re-named the eight committees of the commission and determined that these committees would meet biennially, with four committees meeting per year. ¶5. (SBU) India sponsored a resolution on Energy Security and Sustainable Development that was in effect a resolution on technology transfer. India, strongly backed by Pakistan, proposed treating renewable energy technology as a "non-commercial good" and to place such technology "in the public domain." The United States and Japan could not accept such language and in the end prevailed in getting it removed. The negotiations over this resolution involved mainly the United States and Japan on one side of the table, and India and Pakistan on the other side, with Russia and China observing on the margins. ¶6. (SBU) Iran was only concerned and engaged on two resolutions. One was about Iran's ongoing proposal to host in Tehran an Asian and Pacific Center for Information, Communication and Space Technology-enabled Disaster Management (APIDM). Despite an agreement at last year's conference to allow for an independent consultant study of the proposal, Iran submitted a resolution that incorporated none of the study's recommendations. In the end, the Iranian delegation said they did not have time to produce a new resolution that incorporated the consultant's recommendations that were made at the ACPR meeting in January, so the resolution was withdrawn for the time being, but is likely to resurface next year. The other resolution that concerned Iran was a resolution on reform of the conference structure. Iran appeared to feel isolated in Southwest Asia from the rest of the UNESCAP region and through numerous interventions attempted to use the conference structure resolution as a means to emphasize "sub-regional" programming and to constantly evaluate UNESCAP to see that its wishes are implemented. ¶7. (SBU) The Philippines-sponsored resolution on financing the Millennium Development Goals initially had language in the operative paragraphs calling for debt swaps for middle income countries and for the establishment of a regional official development facility. This language was removed after opposition from Japan, the United States, and Australia. Although the Philippines sponsored the resolution, it was almost silent in the negotiations. Pakistan took over to argue for the original language, though it conceded in the end to our position to reach consensus. ¶8. (U) The full texts of the resolutions and conference reports are available on the ESCAP website at http://www.unescap.org/64. John