MOROCCO INVITES OBSERVERS TO GLOBAL INITIATIVE FOR

UNCLAS RABAT 000085 SIPDIS SIPDIS E.O. 12958: N/A TAGS: PTER KGIC PARMS PREL AU MO SUBJECT: MOROCCO INVITES OBSERVERS TO GLOBAL INITIATIVE FOR COMBATING NUCLEAR TERRORISM CONFERENCE REF: RABAT 00056 ¶1. (U) Summary and Action Request: The Moroccan MFA has agreed to invite observers to the Global Initiative for Combating Nuclear Terrorism Conference (reftel) and has begun to send out invitations. Embassy recommends Department to encourage info addressees from invitee countries to follow-up, possibly in coordination with Russian and Moroccan counterparts. ¶2. (U) At COB on January 25, Moroccan MFA Head of United Nations Division Azzedine Farhane informed the Embassy that the Moroccan Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) had begun sending out invitations for the Global Initiative for Combating Nuclear Terrorism (GI) Conference (i.e., "Responding to Malicious Acts Involving Radioactive Materials"),being hosted in Rabat February 5-7, 2008, to the below list of non-GI member countries to come as observers to the conference. ¶3. (U) While all GI-member states received invitations to the conference in early to mid-January, the two co-hosts of the GI (i.e., U.S. and Russia) encouraged Morocco (via reftel joint demarche) to invite a number of non-GI member states to the conference as observers in the hopes of encouraging them to become full members of the GI. The list of observer invitees contained the following countries: Algeria, Bahrain, Egypt, Jordan, Kuwait, Mali, Niger, Oman, Saudi Arabia, Senegal, Tunisia, and UAE. ¶4. (U) The Moroccan MFA informed us at COB Friday, January 25th, that it had begun sending out invitations to each of the respective country embassies in Rabat, via fax, and promised to follow-up with hard-copy invitations to the same embassies on Monday, February 28th. According to the Moroccan MFA, it will be incumbent upon each invitee country embassy in Rabat to inform its government about the invitation and to pick appropriate individuals to attend. ¶5. (U) As noted in the US-Russian Demarche, reaching out to countries in the Middle East, North Africa, and West Africa reflects both co-chairs' interest in trying to encourage as many countries as possible to join the GI, already made up of some 60 participating countries. Toward this end, and to assist our Moroccan conference hosts, Embassy Rabat recommends that the Department ask embassies in each of the invitee capitals to encourage host country participation in the GI conference, given the short lead time before the conference begins. Ideally, this could include joint demarches with Russian and/or Moroccan embassies. The short time frame, however, may make delivering the message early more important than awaiting these arrangements. ¶6. (U) In addition to the formal U.S. delegation, Post understands that the State Department Coordinator for Counterterrorism Ambassador Dell Dailey will make a brief visit to the conference on that afternoon of February 7th, also to encourage GI membership. ***************************************** Visit Embassy Rabat's Classified Website; http://www.state.sgov.gov/p/nea/rabat ***************************************** Jackson