THE TSD HA/DR OFFICIAL MEETING IN CANBERRA

UNCLAS SECTION 01 OF 03 CANBERRA 001269 SIPDIS PACOM FOR CENTER OF EXCELLENCE, DEPARTMENT FOR EAP/ANP AND EAP/RSP E.O. 12958: N/A TAGS: PREL EAID MARR MOPS ASEAN ARF JA AS SUBJECT: THE TSD HA/DR OFFICIAL MEETING IN CANBERRA ¶1. (SBU) SUMMARY: The Japanese delegation, the American delegation and Australian hosts agreed upon a set of Australian written guidelines for the Trilateral Security Dialog's work in Humanitarian Assistance and Disaster Response (HA/DR),but the task of the coming year will be the editing and acceptance of the supplement to that draft containing more specific follow-through actions pursuant to the guidelines. All participants agreed that efforts at the trilateral level should be complementary with the efforts of the individual nations and be coordinated with other international, regional, and NGO actors in HA/DR. The Australians will chair the next year's efforts. End SUMMARY 2 (SBU) The one day December 2, 2008 meeting, the first Trilateral Security Dialog (TSD) meeting on Humanitarian Assistance/Disaster Response (HA/DR) cooperation, was augmented by a roundtable held at the newly formed Asia Pacific Civil-Military Centre for Excellence in Queanbeyan on December 3, 2008. ¶3. (SBU) Participants: Australian Delegation --Jennifer Rawson: First Assistant Secretary, International Security Division (Head of Delegation) --John Quinn: Assistant Secretary, Strategic Issues and Intelligence Branch (Co-chair of Delegation) --Cameron Archer: Director, Defence and Strategic Policy, International Security Division Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade --Alistair Sherwin, Assistant Secretary, Humanitarian and Middle East Branch, AusAID --Shireen Sandhu, AusAID --Gary Dunbar, AusAID --Karl Kent, Assistant Secretary, Capability and Coordination, Emergency Management Australia (EMA) --Rajan Venkataraman, Senior Advisor, Office of National Security, Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet (PM&C) --Robert McGregor and WGCDR Antony Martin from International Policy Division and Headquarters Joint Operations Command, Department of Defence -- Michael G. Smith: Guest speaker, Executive Director Asia Pacific Civil-Military Centre for Excellence Japanese Delegation --Kiminori Iwama: Director, Oceania Division, Asian and Oceania Affairs Bureau, Ministry of Foreign Affairs (Head of Delegation) --Takashi Koizumi: Director, Overseas Disaster Assistance Division, International Cooperation Bureau, Ministry of Foreign Affairs --Toshihide Ando: Counselor, Embassy of Japan in Canberra --Nobuharu Imanishi: First Secretary, Embassy of Japan Also at Centre meeting --Naoki Semmyo: Second Secretary, Embassy of Japan U.S.Delegation --James Fleming: Director of Operations and Logistics, USAID/OFDA (Head of Delegation) --Bill Berger: USAID/OFDA's Acting Principal Regional Advisor in Bangkok --Alcy Frelick: Director of the Office of Australia, New Zealand, and Pacific Affairs --Joseph Bosco: OSD Policy's Advisor on HA/DR --Jeff Hensel: USAID/OFDA representative at PACOM --Scott Weidie: PACOM --Tom Dolan: HA/DR Advisor, Center for Excellence in Disaster management and Humanitarian Assistance, PACOM --Kevin Sheives, EAP's Office of Regional Security Policy --David Atkinson, Embassy Canberra Disaster Relief Official --Virgil Strohmeyer, Embassy Canberra Political Officer ¶4. (SBU) Kiminori Iwama identified the key issues that Japan considered to be especially novel and important. --The whole-of-government approach is new to the Japanese, Q--The whole-of-government approach is new to the Japanese, and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MoFA) itself has many competing sections dealing with HA/DR. There must be internal discussions concerning the best way forward toward the coordination of individual agency and institutional efforts. --Japanese specific legal constraints hamper the CANBERRA 00001269 002 OF 003 implementation of the approach, especially in the case of the military. --Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR) is already a prime focus of the Japanese Center in Kobe and is of special interest to Japanese actors. --There must be a clearing house for information that summarizes and synergizes the lessons learned from past and future disaster events. ¶5. (SBU) USAID/OFDA's James Fleming emphasized that there was overwhelming agreement among the three countries because of a common spirit of cooperation based on shared values. This commonality allowed an appealing informality of discussion. The TSD meeting outcomes included willingness for increased cooperation, a greater understanding of national goals, and a general comfort with the agreed guidelines. ¶6. (SBU) DFAT's John Quinn concluded for the Australians emphasizing the importance of basic like-mindedness, which allowed much learning from the diversity of national approaches. He felt that there was a real value to the agreement to join the dots of what exists rather than to invent another layer of bureaucracy to the many that already overlay the workers in the field. Although differences and limitations of individual nations must be respected, streamlining documentation and creating a checklist would add to the prudence of policy makers, who would benefit from the production of a working manual open to editing by all the participants. He also wanted to connect with UN organizations and NGOs more effectively, with the TSD partners raising a common profile in political venues. Lastly, all the national centers of excellence should become interlocutors, especially on the issues of developing DRR principles and techniques. ¶7. (SBU) Jennifer Rawson provided the Australian summary of the entire meeting and their intended working points for the coming year: -- There was general agreement on the proposed guidelines that described the working principles for the group-- especially the importance of hazard reduction. -- All participants should consider the draft supplement to the guidelines, which attempted to elaborate their practical implications, as a checklist and a work-in-progress that is not meant to be legally binding. It should come to include the particular issues that are available for cooperation given legal and national restrictions. -- This first meeting has commenced the work of creating a program for the future based upon lessons learned from the three recent disasters in the region: Tsunami, Sichuan earthquake and Burmese cyclone, and of emphasizing how a TSDapproach might have produced more favorable outcomes. This would be the first step in creating a handbook/manual from a survey of national decisions made during these efforts. -- All participants must explore how they can work more effectively together with other organizations-especially UNOCHA, ARF, and APEC. -- The TSD should caucus together in different regional organizations presenting a common front of concerted action. -- The Australian group chairing the work during this year will focus their inter-sessional activities on gathering a contact list and working with the participants' embassies to produce an acceptable draft supplement. ¶8. (SBU) A further smaller roundtable held Dec 3 at the new Queanbeyan Asia Pacific Civil-Military Centre for Excellence QQueanbeyan Asia Pacific Civil-Military Centre for Excellence put forward more targeted proposals that aim to increase coordination during training and preparation for HA/DR operations, and resulted in a fruitful discussion on how to better integrate various approaches defined by the three Centers of Excellence now operating in the Hawaii, Kobe, and Queanbeyan. ¶9. (SBU) Roundtable participants: Australian: From Asia Pacific Civil-Military Centre of Excellence: --Alison Chartres: Chief of Staff --Colonel Neil Greet: Military Affairs Advisor --Dr. Moreen Dee: Executive Officer --Randy Knispel: Training and Website Development and Support CANBERRA 00001269 003 OF 003 --Greg Takats: AusAID secondee (Research and Lessons Learned) --Superintendent Nigel Phair: Australian Federal Police secondee (Education, training and doctrine Development) --Cameron Archer from DFAT --Nicholas Charpentier from DFAT --Sue Edgecombe: AusAID Liaison Officer to the ADF --Thanh Le: AusAID Manager-Emergency Services --Nick Keam: Australian Federal Police, Peace Operations and Doctrine, International Deployment Group US: --Tom Dolan --Scott Weidie --David Atkinson --Virgil Strohmeyer Japan: --Nobuharu Imanishi: First Secretary, Embassy of Japan ¶10. (SBU) The December 3 roundtable identified a number of action possibilities, including: --PACOM's Scott Weidie suggested that national centers of excellence organize a workshop in advance of the Tempest Express Exercise with PACOM. This would be best done two years in future with the exercise centered in Japan (provisional) --All agreed that the whole-of-government approach has to take in the professions--legal, medical, security, engineering and teaching--besides government bureaucracies. Civil and military government must manage enthusiasm. --The TSD's roles must be complementary-combining effectively the efforts of international actors and the NGOs and governments of all three nations. The military role is at the peak of disaster--police replacing them during clean up and reconstruction. Teachers, engineers and medical personnel have a place in the risk reduction phase as well as in the post disaster phase-for disasters are reduced using lessons learned and then applied to the preparatory phase of future events. --Many agreed that next rotation of the TSD working group after Australia should be to Japan, where whole-of-government issues and defense force participation could be tackled. The American rotation could be one of implementation of the agreed upon framework. --Informal reviews after each disaster effort should be shared among the centers. --The centers could develop an outline of civil/military triggers. --The centers should also analyze present stockpiles for their best use and coordination among the three nations using various scenarios, informed by past events and the prognostications of the best science. ¶11. (SBU) COMMENT: All parties agreed both meetings were very useful and identified concrete actions to follow up. How the Australian Center will be stitched together and operate with a number of differing agencies, all with differing roles in the broad spectrum of HA/DR operations, remains to be seen. MCCALLUM