ELECTIONS OBSERVATION UPDATE

C O N F I D E N T I A L ISLAMABAD 000251

SIPDIS

SIPDIS

E.O. 12958: DECL: 01/15/2018
TAGS: PGOV PHUM PK PREL
SUBJECT: ELECTIONS OBSERVATION UPDATE

Classified By: CDA Peter Bodde, Reasons 1.4 (b),(d)


1. (C) Summary: On January 15, Charge met with NSA Tariz Aziz
to urge the GOP to immediately renew visas for International
Republican Institute (IRI) Pakistan mission staff. Charge
later met with IRI to discuss plans for election monitoring.
IRI said that they expected their board to meet in Washington
as early as this week to decide on reactivating the observer
mission; on the ground, they are proceeding with plans for
the mission. IRI local staff said they were still interested
in doing exit polling but acknowledged that it was not part
of the DRL or USAID contract. They were generally satisfied
with security conditions and observer access issues. End
summary.


2. (C) On January 15, Charge and Polcouns met National
Security Advisor Tariq Aziz on several issues, including
IRI's pending visa renewal. Charge noted that President
Musharraf had welcomed international observers, that IRI had
a good five year record in Pakistan working with all parties,
and that we hoped the visa issue could be resolved quickly.
Aziz took notes and said he would look into the matter at
once. Separately, Charge wrote to the Minister of Economic
Affairs Division (EAD),which controls memoranda of
understanding for NGOs and made the same points. We
understand several NGOs currently are having difficulty with
MOU approval from EAD.


3. (C) Later, Charge and Polcouns met with representatives
of the International Republican Institute (IRI) to discuss
the latest on IRI's election observation mission. Rob
Varsalone and Steve Cima said they were generally satisfied
with security conditions and observer access but continued to
press the Elections Commission for approval to conduct an
exit poll. Charge noted that IRI's contracts with DRL and
USAID did not include exit polling; Varsalone agreed and said
this activity would be funded by the National Endowment for
Democracy. He also explained that IRI's planned exit polling
would be limited and was not envisioned to be conducted
nationwide. Varsalone said that he hoped that the IRI board
in Washington would meet this week to approve reactivating
the observer mission that was pulled back after Benazir
Bhutto's assassination. IRI Pakistan has continued to
organize for the mission and hopes to go forward as soon as
possible. Polcouns noted that the MFA is primed and ready to
assist with visa issuance for the observers.


4. (C) Varsalone also advised Charge that IRI will put
another poll in the field next week and expected results by
the first week of February. Because results will be not be
available until weeks before the election, IRI said it
probably would not release all results publicly but would
share them with the Embassy.


5. (C) Comment: While IRI clearly would like to conduct a
limited exit poll, Varsalone did not appear optimistic about
the likelihood the Election Commission would agree to their
proposal. Since it is envisioned as a limited project that
could not be used to check nationwide voting, we believe that
IRI is pursuing this to keep its foot in the door for future
projects in Pakistan. We will continue to push the GOP on
the visa issue. Separately, European members of the
like-minded elections group indicated that they would very
much like IRI to return as they do not want to be the sole
international observer team on the ground.
BODDE