CANADA SEEKS U.S. HELP TO PRESS ISI ON BORDER

C O N F I D E N T I A L OTTAWA 001152 SIPDIS STATE PASS SCA/FO - N. KROMASH E.O. 12958: DECL: 08/29/2018 TAGS: PREL MOPS MARR NATO PK AF CA SUBJECT: CANADA SEEKS U.S. HELP TO PRESS ISI ON BORDER ISSUES REF: A. OTTAWA 704 ¶B. OTTAWA 918 ¶C. OTTAWA 951 Classified By: Acting PolMinCouns Kurt van der Walde, reason 1.4 (b) and (d). ¶1. (C) Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade (DFAIT) Director for South Asia Jim Nickel told pol/miloff on August 28 that Pakistani ISI Director General Lieutenant General Nadeem Taj had just canceled his September 4-5 meetings with senior Canadian officials in Ottawa. Nickel said he thought the cancellation was due to either the September 5-6 presidential election in Pakistan, or because LGen Taj was dissatisfied with the level of interlocutors he rated in Ottawa. LGen Taj had asked for meetings with ministers but instead would have met with high-level civil servants and military officers. ¶2. (C) Nickel said he was disappointed by the cancellation because he had hoped to use the meetings to press LGen Taj on the need to use new Canadian-donated technical gear at the Chaman-Spin Boldak crossing point between Pakistan and Afghanistan, and to participate in the last of five Canadian-sponsored Dubai Process meetings in October (reftels). The Pakistanis have taken delivery of much of the equipment donated by Canada, Nickel said, but have not yet put it to use at Chaman. Pakistani ISI officials moreover are "non-responsive" to Canadian queries on the matter. They also have begun refusing Canadian requests to travel to Quetta and Baluchistan, he added. The Canadians sense good buy-in to the Dubai Process from the Pakistani Ministry of Interior, Frontier Corps, Counternarcotics Force, the mainline military, and the MFA. It seems to Canadian officials, he said, that the ISI is putting a "stick in the spokes" to knock Canada's most important initiatives off track. ¶3. (C) Nickel asked whether LGen Taj is still planning to visit Washington, D.C. If so, he said, CANADA would appreciate U.S. officials giving him and other senior Pakistanis "a little nudge" to stop blocking Pakistani participation in the Canadian-sponsored Dubai Process, and to put Canadian technical assistance to work at the Chaman-Spin Boldak crossing. Nickel observed that it would be important to do this in a subtle way so the Pakistanis would not sense that CANADA and the U.S. were conspiring to gang up on them. Visit Canada,s Economy and Environment Forum at http://www.intelink.gov/communities/state/can ada MINIMIZE CONSIDERED LAHORE WILKINS