COSTA RICA TO VOTE WITH USG ON KEY THIRD COMMITTEE

C O N F I D E N T I A L SAN JOSE 000883 SIPDIS DEPT FOR WHA, WHA/CEN, IO, IO/UNP, DRL AND DRL/MLGA E.O. 12958: DECL: 11/12/2018 TAGS: CS IR KNNP PGOV PHUM PREL UN SUBJECT: COSTA RICA TO VOTE WITH USG ON KEY THIRD COMMITTEE RESOLUTIONS REF: A. A) STATE 118278 ¶B. SAN JOSE 761 (NOTAL) Classified By: DCM Peter Brennan per 1.4(d) 1.(C) Under direction from the Ambassador, on November 10, DCM and Pol/C raised Ref A demarche with MFA senior staff Antonio Alarcon and Alex Solano. Alarcon is FM Stagno's COS, and handled Third Committee issues when he was assigned to the Costa Rican UN mission. Alex Solano is the Deputy Director for Foreign Policy. We expressed USG gratitude for Costa Rica's continued opposition to no-action motions in the Third Committee, and, noting that Iran was a particular priority, we urged the GOCR to vote again in favor of substantive motions on Iran, Burma, and the DPRK, as they did in 2007. We also asked Costa Rica's help in stiffening the support on these issues from regional neighbors PANAMA and Colombia. IO's country-specific non-papers on all three countries were very useful (but would have been even more so in Spanish); we delivered these as part of the demarche. ¶2. (C) Alarcon and Solano quickly responded that Costa Rica would continue to oppose no-action motions as a matter of principle, and would vote in favor of substantive motions on all three countries. The two indicated that the GOCR expected our demarche, which followed a similar approach to the GOCR mission in New York by USUN. Solano explained that Japanese diplomats had recently demarched the MFA to consider softening the GOCR's position vis-a-vis a DPRK resolution in hopes of improving the DPRK's cooperation in the Six Party talks. The MFA refused to change its views and link the two initiatives. On Iran, Solano voiced Costa Rican concerns about discrimination against religious groups, in particular Christians, but also other groups such as Bahais. On Burma, Solano said that the regime's human rights violations were well-known and long-standing; of course Costa Rica would continue to call for change there. As we reported in Ref B, however, Solano re-iterated the GOCR's reluctance to co-sponsor resolutions (in the Third Committee or elsewhere) unless Costa Rica's views and specific language proposals were given due consideration. ¶3. (C) Solano expected Colombia to continue to abstain in Third Committee votes this year, to avoild inviting attacks on its own human rights situation. He doubted the GOC could be persuaded to change that position. Solano was slightly more optimistic about Panama, based on deeper Costa Rica-Panama relations opened by President Torrijos' October visit. Neither Solano nor Alarcon explicitly promised that the GOCR would lobby PANAMA on Third Committee issues, however, (and as noted in Ref A, PANAMA and Costa Rica voted with the USG position on the Iran, Burman and DPRK resolutions in 2007, anyway). CIANCHETTE