ITALY SUPPORTS AFGHAN ELECTIONS, PLANS G8

UNCLAS ROME 001284 SENSITIVE SIPDIS SCA/A FOR NISHA SINGH E.O. 12958: N/A TAGS: PREL PGOV IT AF SUBJECT: ITALY SUPPORTS AFGHAN ELECTIONS, PLANS G8 MINISTERIAL OUTREACH SESSION ON AFGHANISTAN REF: A. STATE 108855 ¶B. ROME 1251 ¶C. ROME 1219 ¶1. Sensitive but Unclassified. Please protect accordingly. 2.(SBU) Poloff delivered Ref A demarche requesting support for the 2009 and 2010 Afghan Elections to Italian MFA Special Envoy for Afghanistan Sergio Mercuri on October 21. Mercuri said that Italy has already contributed Euro 5 million to support Afghan elections since 2003, via UNDP and other channels, and had announced an additional Euro 1 million for election support at the Paris Support Conference in June (as part of its pledge of Euro 60 million per year for three years). He did not rule out the possibility of additional contributions in the run-up to the 2009 elections, but said that Italy's tight budgetary situation would make new aid requests above the existing pledge levels difficult. (Note: MFA officials have told us that although aid levels will be slashed by up to 60 per cent in 2009, the MFA has secured a commitment from the Finance Ministry to support Italy's 3-year Paris pledge, thereby protecting Afghan aid from budget cuts (Refs B and C)) ¶2. (SBU) Italy is concerned that little progress had been made on the draft Afghan Electoral Law, but is not linking its financial contribution to completion of the law. Mercuri agreed that presidential and provincial council elections should be held on schedule in 2009 and not be allowed to slip. ¶3. (SBU) Mercuri also asked for U.S. support for Italy's plan, which FM Frattini had announced the same day in Islamabad, to hold a Ministerial-level Conference on Afghanistan and Pakistan as part of its G8 Presidency in ¶2009. Mercuri stressed that the "conference" would in fact be a simple Ministerial side event as part of the Outreach session in May or June, preceded by meetings at the Assistant Secretary and Political Director level in the run-up to the 2009 Summit, in line with what Germany had done with regard to Afghanistan during its 2007 presidency. He did not yet have details on the proposed conference agenda, but said that the focus would be regional cooperation with an emphasis on strengthening security and cooperation along the Afghan-Pakistan border. Outreach partners being considered include India, China, Saudi Arabia and the UAE, but the final format had not been decided and Italy would welcome U.S. input on the matter. The conference would be designed to compliment, not compete with existing mechanisms such as the NATO-led Tripartite Meetings or the Friends of Pakistan group, of which Italy is glad to be a part. ¶4. (SBU) When asked whether combating the narcotics problem in Afghanistan would be a theme of Italy's G8 presidency, as FM Frattini has suggested in the press on previous occasions, Mercuri replied that counternarcotics would be addressed (as it has been in the last several G8 ministerial declarations), but the primary forum for the discussion would likely be the G8 Rome-Lyon working groups and not the Ministerial session. DIBBLE