ANTARCTIC TREATY: ITALY REQUESTS DIPLOMATIC NOTE CONFIRMING

UNCLAS ROME 001052 SIPDIS OES/OA - Rob Hughes E.O. 12958: N/A TAGS: TPHY SENV AORC KSCA IT SUBJECT: ANTARCTIC TREATY: ITALY REQUESTS DIPLOMATIC NOTE CONFIRMING OFFICIAL STATUS OF MADRID ATCM REPORT Ref: State 74080 ¶1. Summary and action request. Italian Foreign Ministry officials working on Antarctic issues are pushing for the measure creating the Antarctic Treaty Secretariat (Measure 1) to be approved, which can be done without Parliamentary review. Progress has been blocked by their need for an official "original" copy of Measure 1. They request a U.S. diplomatic note explaining that the Final Report for the relevant meeting should be considered the certified copy. End summary. Action request: Post seeks the Department's approval to transmit a diplomatic note to Italy containing the operative text included in paragraph 6 below (or alternate text provided by the Department). ¶2. On July 17, SCICOUNS delivered reftel points to Counselor Francesco Capponi, Ambassador Arduino Fornara, and Counselor Adriano Tedeschi of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA). Capponi follows Antarctic issues for the MFA's Asia, Oceania, Pacific, and Antarctic Affairs Directorate. Fornara represents Italy in Antarctic Treaty Consultative Meetings (ATCMs). Tedeschi is an expert in the MFA's legal office. ¶3. Amb. Fornara expressed hope that ATCM Measure 1 (2003) would be approved in time for the April 2009 ATCM in Baltimore. Couns. Capponi explained that Measure 1 does not need to be approved by the Italian Parliament. Instead, it can be approved by a legislative decree, which is signed by President Napolitano. He also noted that Italy already is paying its treaty contributions regularly, and so the approval will not entail additional funding. ¶4. Capponi and Tedeschi explained that Italian legal experts had been concerned about the immunity provisions of ATCM Measure 1. They had obtained clarification from the Argentine Government (which has been pushing the MFA to obtain Italy's approval of Measure 1) that the immunity provisions are only with relation to the Secretariat's status in Argentina, and do not apply to other countries. That freed the issue to move forward in the MFA's review process, but the process then foundered on the MFA's need for an "original" copy of Measure 1. ¶5. Capponi had obtained from the Argentine Embassy in Rome a diplomatic note containing an excerpt from a diplomatic note which the Argentine Embassy in Washington had received from the State Department, explaining that the U.S. could not provide a certified copy of Measure 1, and that the Final Reports of ATCM meetings would be considered the certified copies of the measures. Tedeschi said that the text of that note would be sufficient to allow the MFA to consider the Final Report the original copy, if the MFA received that information via diplomatic note directly from the U.S. (Capponi said he had provided to Tedeschi earlier the original copy of the report, which he had located in the MFA's archives.) ¶6. If the Department approves, Post proposes to send to the MFA a diplomatic note containing the following operative text. It is drawn verbatim from the Argentine diplomatic note quoting the U.S. diplomatic note, with a few changes in the final sentence (e.g., the substitution of "Italy" for "Argentina," and "Italian" for "Argentine"). Begin proposed text: "Unfortunately, the U.S. is not in a position to provide a certified copy of the measure requested (Measure 1 adopted at the 26th Antarctic Treaty Consultative Meeting held at Madrid June 9-20, 2003). This is so because the countries which host each Antarctic treaty Consultative Meeting (in the case of the 26th meeting, it was Spain),being the custodians of the official documents of those meetings, are the only entities that can create certified copies of the documents produced at the meeting. These documents are usually printed in a "Final Report" of each meeting, copies of which are issued to each Antarctic treaty party. The Final Reports would be considered the certified copies of the measures and decisions that were adopted at the meetings. Presumably such a Final Report already was issued to Italy, but it should be possible for the Government of Italy to obtain another copy of the Final Report for the 26th meeting if the original cannot be located." ¶7. Please advise if Post is authorized to send a diplomatic note to Italy containing this or other text addressing this issue. Crawford