Identifier
Created
Classification
Origin
08SARAJEVO1036
2008-06-18 16:53:00
CONFIDENTIAL//NOFORN
Embassy Sarajevo
Cable title:  

BOSNIA - SCENESETTER FOR THE JUNE 24-25 PEACE

Tags:  PGOV PREL PINR PHUM KAWC MARR ECON EAID EU 
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O 181653Z JUN 08
FM AMEMBASSY SARAJEVO
TO SECSTATE WASHDC IMMEDIATE 8523
INFO EUROPEAN POLITICAL COLLECTIVE
CIA WASHINGTON DC
DIA WASHINGTON DC
NSC WASHDC
SECDEF WASHDC
USNIC SARAJEVO
C O N F I D E N T I A L SARAJEVO 001036 


NOFORN

DEPARTMENT FOR EUR(DICARLO),EUR/SCE(HOH/FOOKS); OSD FOR
BIEN

E.O. 12958: DECL: 01/01/2015
TAGS: PGOV PREL PINR PHUM KAWC MARR ECON EAID EU
RU, BK
SUBJECT: BOSNIA - SCENESETTER FOR THE JUNE 24-25 PEACE
IMPLEMENTATION COUNCIL

Classified By: Ambassador Charles English. Reasons 1.4(b) and (d).

C O N F I D E N T I A L SARAJEVO 001036


NOFORN

DEPARTMENT FOR EUR(DICARLO),EUR/SCE(HOH/FOOKS); OSD FOR
BIEN

E.O. 12958: DECL: 01/01/2015
TAGS: PGOV PREL PINR PHUM KAWC MARR ECON EAID EU
RU, BK
SUBJECT: BOSNIA - SCENESETTER FOR THE JUNE 24-25 PEACE
IMPLEMENTATION COUNCIL

Classified By: Ambassador Charles English. Reasons 1.4(b) and (d).


1. (C/NF) SUMMARY: The June 24-25 Peace Implementation
Council (PIC) will take place in the warm glow of Bosnia's
June 16 signing of its Stabilization and Association
Agreement (SAA) with the EU. Though this fulfills one of the
two conditions set by the PIC in February for closure of OHR.
Progress in other five specific objectives has been slow,
though the HighRep believes the fiscal sustainability
objective could be complete before the PIC. Though the mood
among Bosnians has improved since February, and the SAA
signing is welcome news, two important fundamentals have not
changed: 1) the state still struggles to perform the
functions necessary to sustain itself; and, 2) the country
remains deeply divided along ethnic lines. The Russians, who
no longer play a constructive role in Bosnia, have signaled
that they may transform what should be a relatively
uneventful PIC into a stormy re-hash of the February debate
over a conditions-based versus a time-based approach to OHR's
closure. If this occurs, we may find ourselves battling
Lajcak's instincts to secure consensus at all costs. We will
need to repeat what we told him in Washington: the U.S. will
not accept a lowest common denominator definition of success
even if that means accepting a Russian footnote in the
communique. We will also need to reiterate the importance we
place on meaningful implementation of the PIC conditions and
objectives and the need for OHR to confront challenges from
local political actors to state-level institutions as well as
their efforts to roll back previous reforms. END SUMMARY

The PIC in Context
--------------


2. (C) The PIC will take place just over one week after

Bosnia signed its long-awaited Stabilization and Association
Agreement (SAA) with the EU, but there is little awareness
among the political class or Bosnia's citizens of the
daunting task implementation presents. According the Council
of Minister's EU Integration Directorate, Bosnia, among other
things, should now implement 30 concrete measures prior to
the end of September. EUSR officials' private assessment is
that the RS is likely to block at least eight of these.
Dodik's recent pronouncements about EU integration and
attacks on the EU Integration Directorate have also raised
concerns about his intentions vis-a-vis SAA implementation.
At the same time, EU diplomats have emphasized that SAA
implementation will depend on the Bosnians, suggesting that
they are unprepared to facilitate or forge compromises among
the country's three constituent peoples. With all this in
mind, we continue to urge caution about assuming that the
"pull" of Europe or that European leadership are sufficient
to overcome Bosnia's deep ethnic divisions or dysfunctional
state structure.

The Russians: From Friend to Foe
--------------


3. (C) Despite their agreement at the February PIC to the
conditions and objectives for OHR's closure, the Russians
have signaled that they may try to revisit the issue at this
PIC. We understand that their aim would be to secure a
commitment -- perhaps informally, or perhaps in the
communique -- to set a timeline for OHR's closure at the
October PIC. It is unclear how hard the Russians will press
their case, but we should be prepared for a vigorous push
given Russian conduct over the last several months,
particularly at meetings of the Steering Board Ambassadors
(SBA). At these meetings the Russians have regularly warned
OHR not to pressure the Bosnian Serbs and staunchly defended
Dodik's anti-Dayton rhetoric. Many of the Russian
interventions have taken the form of long, prepared
statements, which suggests the Russian Ambassador has been
speaking under instruction.


4. (C/NF) The Russians have also taken positions on issues
confronting OHR and the SBA that appear designed to
accomplish little more than complicate the international
community's work in Bosnia. The most notable was Russia's
opposition to the Srebrenica election deal, which the
U.S.-brokered and which Dodik supported. The Russian
decision to recognize the contribution of RS war veterans to
the "Homeland Defense War," as many Serbs refer to the
1992-1995 war, by presenting the RS Veterans Association with
the Order of Dimitri Dunski, underscores Russia's
transformation from partner to problem in Bosnia. Russia's
unhelpful approach to Bosnia has not gone unnoticed within
the SBA, but many have thus far been unprepared to confront
the Russians. Nonetheless, we can expect Turkish and British
help pushing back Russian attempts to water down the PIC's
conditions-based approach to OHR closure and/or substitute a
time-based approach.

Lajcak and Consensus
--------------


5. (C/NF) Lajcak is concerned about the potential for Russian
trouble making at the PIC, but he does not seem prepared to
forcefully counter it himself. Instead he seems inclined to
stress the importance of consensus even at the expense of
sacrificing substance. This approach may have some sympathy
among some of the Europeans, but the Turks, extremely unhappy
with Lajcak's performance in recent months, have made clear
that they are not prepared to accept consensus for consensus'
sake. (Note: The Turkish Ambassador recently suggested that
Lajcak had been deliberately gilding his reports to the SBA
on Bosnian political development and called on him to provide
the SBA with "more thorough assessments" of events in Bosnia,
adding that Turkey wanted "the real picture." End Note) We
need to repeat to Lajcak the message we delivered to him in
Washington: we will not accept a lowest common denominator
definition of success even if that means accepting a Russian
footnote in the communique. We will probably need to make
this point on the margins of the PIC to several European
delegations as well.

The Conditions and Objectives: A Scorecard
--------------


6. (C) In February the PIC set two conditions and five
objectives for closure of OHR and transition to EUSR. One of
the two conditions, the signing of the SAA, has been met, but
objective observers would agree that Bosnia has not met the
second condition "a positive assessment of the situation in
BiH...based on full compliance with the Dayton Peace
Agreement." Republika Srpska (RS) politicians continue to
fuel Bosnian Serb nationalism by blocking state building
initiatives, seeking to reverse reforms, and attacking the
legitimacy of the Bosnian state. Bosniak political leaders
continue to pursue politically-impossible dreams at the
expense of tangible progress in a manner that has radicalized
Bosniak politics, and the Croats remain fixed on what amounts
to a third entity. We expect Bosniak, Croat and Serb
nationalist rhetoric to rise in coming months as political
parties began to campaign in earnest for the October 5
municipal elections. The summer holidays and fall election
campaign also make it unlikely that there will be much
progress on the objectives between the June and October PICs.



7. (C) Progress on the PIC's specific objectives has been
slow. A quick scorecard follows. OHR has promised to
provide a more detail scorecard to delegations during the PIC.

-- Acceptable and Sustainable Resolution of State Property:
No progress. Disconcertingly, the Russians have been
privately echoing the Serb line that Dayton granted all
former Yugoslav state property to the entities.
-- Acceptable and Sustainable Resolution to Defense Property:
Moveable property has been resolved; though a key test of its
sustainability will come later this summer when the army
relocates air defense equipment from the RS to around
Sarajevo. There has been no progress on immoveable defense
property.
-- Completion of the Brcko Final Award: The. U.S. and OHR
have collaborated to prepare a draft Law on Brcko and draft
constitutional amendments. Quiet consultations with
political parties are underway, but Silajdzic has signaled
that he is likely to oppose the amendments.
-- Fiscal Sustainability: Parliament may adopt the Law on a
National Fiscal Counil prior to the PIC, but the prospects
for an agreement on a permanent ITA coefficient prior to the
PIC are rapidly receding.
-- Rule of Law: The Law on the Stay and Movement of Aliens
and Asylum has been adopted; we are now working with OHR on
the associated rule books. A National Justice Reform
Strategy has been finalized; it must now be approved by the
CoM, the entities and Brcko. The National War Crimes
Strategy is still in the drafting stage.

Lajcak: Stiffening his Resolve on the Objectives
-------------- ---


8. (C/NF) OHR's primary agenda remains implementation of the
PIC conditions and objectives. OHR staff have urged Lajcak
to develop strategies to do this, underscoring the importance
of securing political agreement on "the easiest objectives"
early (i.e., fiscal sustainability) in order to marshal
political capital needed to secure agreement on the more
sensitive objectives (i.e., state property, immoveable
defense property, Brcko, and potentially, adoption of the
National War Crimes Strategy). Thus far Lajcak has engaged
on the objectives in an ad hoc fashion, if at all. Instead,
he has complained privately that OHR is "unable to deliver"
and implied that he is prepared to accept less than full
implementation of the remaining objectives. We must make
clear to Lajcak that we expect a) OHR to engage on the
objectives (as well as to actively defend reforms that have
already been implemented),and that b) the objectives'
implementation will be consistent with the overall goal of
entrenching reform and ensuring Bosnia meets is able its
commitments for Euro-Atlantic integration. This language
comes straight from the February communique. We should
ensure that it and the February language requesting the
HighRep "to undertake all appropriate measures to ensure the
above objectives are met" are repeated.

Messages for the Government and Party Leaders
--------------


9. (C) The PIC will hold its usual meetings with Bosnian
government and political party leaders, and we will also have
bilateral meetings with key political leaders prior to the
PIC. At the PIC, we will want to congratulate them on the
SAA signing (as well as Bosnia's invitation from NATO to
participate in an Intensified Dialogue),but we should also
be clear that further progress towards Euro-Atlantic
integration will require much greater effort on their part.
They cannot, as they have for the last two years, focus their
time and energy on issues that divide the country. Nor can
they spend their time exchanging bitter polemics over each
reform, as they did with police reform. We should underscore
that the invitation to join NATO's Intensified Dialogue and
the signing of the SAA present Bosnia's government and
political leaders with an opportunity to move beyond the
divisive and destructive politics of the last two years, and
stress that we are prepared to work with them if they seize
it. In our private exchanges with Bosnian political leaders,
we should forcefully reiterate the messages we delivered
publicly to them in the Ambassador's May 11 speech to the NGO
Circle 99. This is particularly important with RS PM Dodik
and Bosniak member of the Tri-Presidency Silajdzic, who have
tried to drive wedges between the Embassy and Washington.
Finally, an exchange with Tihic, who may miss the PIC due to
ongoing medical treatment in Ljubljana, should include a
clear message about the importance of his party selecting a
candidate for the Srebrenica mayoralty capable of helping
Srebrenica heal its wounds.

ENGLISH