FRANCE: ICAO AVIATION SECURITY PANEL DEMARCHE

UNCLAS PARIS 000978 SENSITIVE SIPDIS STATE FOR EB/TRA, IO/T, EUR/WE MONTREAL FOR USICAO TSA HQ FOR MACREARY E.O. 12958: N/A TAGS: EAIR PREL ICAO PTER FR SUBJECT: FRANCE: ICAO AVIATION SECURITY PANEL DEMARCHE REF: STATE 51523 ¶1. (SBU) Econoff delivered reftel demarche May 16 to Alexandre Crozat, Head of the Office for Civil Aviation Security Measures at the French Civil Aviation Authority (DGAC). Crozat stressed that France would wish to hear the ICAO discussions before coming to final decisions on these issues. Nonetheless, he offered some preliminary thoughts on the topics we raised. ¶2. (SBU) Flight crew compartment and POC network: He expressed some doubts about the use of the POC network and was not sure it was a priority to require infrastructure cabin changes to set up a secondary barrier. However, France remained very motivated to reaffirm the necessity of correctly protecting the cockpit, primarily through personnel training. On enhancing the POC network, Crozat was in favor of enlargement to include as many states as possible, and agreed that testing should be done, though he thought that issues for discussion with emergency contacts rather than regular authorities would need to be chosen with care. ¶3. (SBU) Emerging Threats Working Group, AVSEC Panel, Audit Transparency: France is interested in the idea of enhancing the discussion of security related issues within ICAO, and thinks the change from Aviation Security Panel to Commission could also be looked at. On Emerging Threats he was not sure that it would be easy to get colleagues to share intelligence information in the ICAO environment - it was already very difficult within the G8. On the change from Panel to Commission, Crozat was worried that too frequent meetings would be a downside. He said that both actions should be closely coordinated, to avoid duplication of efforts. On the transparency of audit information, he stated "We are getting more and more comfortable with the idea of transparency." France is prepared to think about sharing mechanisms that ensure an adequate protection of data, where useful information to mitigate the risk from incoming flights can be gathered. Stapleton