Identifier
Created
Classification
Origin
08PARTO7
2008-02-28 19:12:00
CONFIDENTIAL
US Delegation, Secretary
Cable title:  

(U) Secretary Rice's participation in the June

Tags:  OVIP RICE CONDOLEEZZA PREL EAID MOPS JA AU 
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C O N F I D E N T I A L PARTO 000007 

SIPDIS

E.O. 12958: DECL: 06/28/2018
TAGS: OVIP RICE CONDOLEEZZA PREL EAID MOPS JA AU
CH, IN
SUBJECT: (U) Secretary Rice's participation in the June
27, 2008 Trilateral Strategic Dialogue

C O N F I D E N T I A L PARTO 000007

SIPDIS

E.O. 12958: DECL: 06/28/2018
TAGS: OVIP RICE CONDOLEEZZA PREL EAID MOPS JA AU
CH, IN
SUBJECT: (U) Secretary Rice's participation in the June
27, 2008 Trilateral Strategic Dialogue


1. (U) Classified by: Uzra Zeya, Deputy Executive
Secretary, S/ES, Department of State, Reasons 1.4 (b) and
(d).


2. (U) June 27, 2008; Kyoto, Japan.


3. (U) Participants:

U.S.
The Secretary
Ambassador Schieffer
U/S Bill Burns
A/S Christopher R. Hill, EAP
Lt. Gen. William Fraser
DCOS Besanceney
A/S Sean McCormack, PA
CG Daniel Russel (notetaker)

JAPAN
Foreign Minister Masahiko Koumura
Kenichiro Sasae, Deputy Foreign Minister for Political
Affairs
Shinichi Nishimiya, Director General, MOFA N. American
Affairs
Akitaka Saiki, Director General, MOFA Asian and Oceanian
Affairs
Kanji Yamanouchi, Director, MOFA First N. America Division
Shimokawa, Secretary
Iwama, Director


AUSTRALIA
Foreign Minister Smith
Foreign Secretary L?Estrange
Counselor Bloomfield
Advisor Hoogen
Advisor Mundy


4. (C) SUMMARY: The Secretary met with the Foreign
Ministers of Japan and Australia for the fourth
ministerial meeting of the Trilateral Strategic Dialogue
(TSD),immediately following the G-8 Ministerial in Kyoto,
Japan. They reviewed trilateral cooperation in
Humanitarian Assistance/Disaster Relief (HA/DR),the
Security and Defense Cooperation Forum, Counterterrorism,
Southeast Asia, the Pacific Islands, and Intelligence.
The United States agreed to host the next TSD Ministerial.
The working dinner addressed India, China, proliferation,
and Burma. Japan, as host, released a Ministerial
statement with an annex on Humanitarian
Assistance/Disaster Relief (HA/DR). END SUMMARY.

--------------
Ministerial Meeting
--------------



5. (SBU) The Secretary and the Foreign Ministers of Japan
and Australia moved briskly through the agreed agenda
after affirming the value of the TSD and expressing their
commitment to the process. While it was valuable to share
views given the pace of change in the region, they agreed
that the key was achieving practical and effective results

through the TSD process. They endorsed the plan for a
Senior Officials Meeting (SOM) on the margins of UNGA, and
Japan and Australia welcomed the U.S. offer to host the
next Ministerial ? ideally before January 20, 2009.


6. (C) Humanitarian Assistance/Disaster Relief (HA/DR):
The three Ministers approved a statement on HA/DR and
agreed it should be followed up with concrete work by the
Washington Working Group and in the field. FM Smith
indicated that Australia planned to host an officer-level
meeting soon to finalize guidelines for trilateral
cooperation.


7. (C) Security and Defense Cooperation Forum (SCDF):
FM Koumura proposed holding tabletop exercises, noted the
value of increased interoperability, and committed to
moving forward on information sharing, exercises, and
other concrete measures. The Secretary said the SCDF was
a good forum for cooperation that was building structure
from lessons learned in the Indian Ocean Tsunami relief
effort. FM Smith confirmed Australia will host a
principals meeting in early 2009.


8. (C) Counterterrorism (CT) Cooperation: The Secretary
said the United States would host a TSD CT forum in the
fall and looked to embassies to continue to work
trilaterally between meetings to exchange information and
identify gaps or duplication. All three ministers praised
the May seminar on bioterrorism held in Malaysia as useful
and innovative.


9. (C) Southeast Asia Cooperation: While cooperation
with ASEAN was valuable, the Secretary said, trilateral
coordination was essential to address Southeast Asia?s
challenges and proposed director-level discussions to
build on cooperative efforts among our embassies. FM
Smith agreed and also stressed the importance of building
good relations with Indonesia, describing it as a key to
the region, which was facing economic, food, energy, and
terrorism challenges.


10. (C) Fifth Japan-Pacific Summit: FM Koumura raised
the importance of keeping pressure on Fiji to hold
elections in March. He suggested that TSD regional
embassy working groups could be expanded to include New
Zealand. FM Smith demurred "for the time being;" others
like France also had a special interest in the Pacific.
Expressing skepticism about Fiji?s election timeline, he
recommended the three countries push for a firm commitment
at the August Pacific Island Forum leaders meeting in


Niue. The Secretary agreed and commended Australia?s
leadership in the Pacific. She also asked Australia and
Japan to use the TSD working group to explore economic
opportunities for Pacific development resulting from U.S.
military realignment to Guam.


11. (C) Intelligence Cooperation: FM Smith proposed that
the three intelligence services share thinking on the
strategic implications of emerging global problems such as
resource shortages, climate change, and pandemics.
Secondly, he flagged the importance of working together to
identify and fix deficiencies in information handling and
security. Secretary Rice endorsed the suggestions. FM
Koumura acknowledged that intelligence reform "needs to be
done properly" to permit the sharing of information.

--------------
INDIA
--------------


12. (C) FM Smith began the working dinner discussion by
flagging India?s emergence as an important issue for the
TSD. Secretary Rice described India as struggling to come
to terms with itself as a global power and to leave behind
its self-image as a champion of the obsolete Non-Aligned
Movement. She contrasted India's uncooperative behavior
in the Doha round with the impressive role Delhi played in
Tsunami relief, its approach on climate change, and its
leadership as a donor to the UN?s Democracy Fund. She
urged that the TSD find specific areas of cooperation to
engage India and speed its transition to a global role.
Surely, India could be involved in TSD HA/DR activities
and discussions, even if we did not formalize a "quad,"
the Secretary observed.


13. (C) The other two ministers expressed strong support
for such involvement as a way to encourage India's global
engagement particularly, as FM Koumura noted, given
India's huge potential and its appetite for resources.
Japanese yen loans and development aid to India was
modest, but it was helping to stimulate private investment
there. In response to FM Smith's reference to India's
post-colonial bureaucracy, Secretary Rice pointed out that
as a functioning democracy, India could be particularly
effective as a model and mentor in the developing world.
Imagine the contribution a bureaucracy like India's could
make to civil society and rule of law in Afghanistan, for
example. The Secretary also briefed on U.S.-India
relations, making clear that the civil nuclear deal was
only a single issue in a broad and active relationship.

--------------
CHINA
--------------


14. (C) FM Smith called good relations with both emerging


powers India and China a "plus sum game" that benefitted
everyone. That said, Australia had no illusions about
China, and Prime Minister Rudd had been forthright with
Beijing on its human rights breaches in Tibet. The
Secretary said the United States had just resumed its
human rights dialogue with China and was working to move
beyond individual prisoner cases to structural reform,
such as laws that criminalize free speech and require U.S.
internet companies to monitor and report bloggers.
Another issue was making China act responsibly in economic
terms: its economy was far too large to hide behind the
?developing country? label to rationalize threatening or
unacceptable practices. The Secretary concluded that
China needed to act responsibly in accordance with its
power abroad as well as at home; its willingness to fund
palaces for Sudan?s leadership, for example, contradicted
the international push for good governance.


15. (C) A third concern, which the Secretary said should
be discussed trilaterally but also taken up with Beijing
individually, was Chinese militarization. China?s
military build-up exceeded its national security needs,
lacked transparency, and was marked by troubling events
like the recent anti-satellite test. FM Koumura strongly
agreed that each of the three governments should press the
Chinese for transparency regarding its military build-up.

--------------
Proliferation
--------------


16. (C) FM Koumura criticized China?s unwillingness to
make progress on nuclear disarmament and expressed concern
about China?s and India?s nuclear arsenals, asking if the
the United States and Australia were similarly worried.
The Secretary said we were concerned because China and
India, as well as Pakistan, were operating in an
?unconstrained atmosphere? without a security architecture
that could reduce risk. In contrast, the United States
and the Soviet Union had in place a large measure of
predictability through dialogue, transparency, and CBMs
during the Cold War. FM Smith asked if there was more we
could do collectively and raised the Australian proposal
for an International Nuclear Nonproliferation and
Disarmament Commission, which he asked Japan to consider
joining. The U.S.-Soviet experience showed the value of
regulatory arrangements to reduce risk. Moreover, we face
the more grave threat of a non-state actor acquiring a
nuclear weapon. FM Koumura interjected that a nuclear-
armed North Korea - a state that kidnapped Japanese
citizens - posed as much a threat as a terrorist group.
The Secretary replied, "That?s exactly why we are trying
to disarm them."


17. (C) Secretary Rice told FM Smith that the Australian-


proposed Commission was a welcome development. There was
a real threat from terrorist organizations and rogue
nations. She said she hoped the Commission would address
the need for a regulatory regime since Asia, unlike the
U.S.-Soviet model that evolved over 30 years, had no
security institution to manage threats and prevent
accidental release. That was one reason we were looking
to see if a mechanism could emerge from the Six-Party
Talks. A third urgent issue, the Secretary said, was the
fuel cycle problem: namely, the loophole in the NPT that
entitled countries to enrich and reprocess. Since we
could not verify in a closed society if the application
was genuinely for civil power, that loophole needed to be
closed.

--------------
IRAN
--------------


18. (C) This dual use loophole was why we had an Iran
problem, the Secretary stated. It was essential that we
cooperate to prevent Tehran from joining the group of
dangerous states with nuclear weapons. Libya had been a
terrorist state that was persuaded to voluntarily
relinquish its WMD program. North Korea, after a 30-year
quest for nuclear weapons, was now beginning to destroy
its nuclear facilities. Syria's nuclear reactor, however,
was taken out of commission in a different manner. Tehran
needed to be persuaded to comply. FM Smith agreed that we
faced a significant threat and called Iran the "test case"
on nuclear proliferation. The prospect of any state
acting unilaterally to "deal" with the Iranian nuclear
problem was worrying. The challenge was to use pressure,
including UN sanctions, to bring Iran into compliance with
international norms.

--------------
BURMA
--------------


19. (C) Turning to Burma, the Secretary predicted that
the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF) would in effect be the
"Burma Meeting." For the Junta to let untold numbers die
while clearly non-political relief sat offshore was so
awful that the ARF could not appear to accept it. FM
Smith pronounced himself "in screaming agreement."
Australia had made explicit that while its humanitarian
aid had no politics attached, the Junta still blocked it.
ASEAN and the UN Secretary-General were able to make only
minor inroads. FM Koumura said he fully agreed with
taking up the issue at ARF and said we should bring sticks
as well as offer carrots if there was some movement.
Burma's leaders, like North Korea's, had proven themselves
devoid of any concern for their people.
RICE