BRAZZAVILLE IN BRIEF - APRIL 2, 2009

UNCLAS SECTION 01 OF 04 BRAZZAVILLE 000101

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SUBJECT: BRAZZAVILLE IN BRIEF - APRIL 2, 2009

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INDEX

1. French President's visit


2. Pointe-Noire port improvements to begin in October


3. Bilateral US-Congo trade


4. Venezuela Opens Embassy


5. First Conviction for Chimp Trafficking


6. Tibet, Anyone?


7. Who's in Charge?

SARKOZY'S VISIT
--------------

1. (SBU) French President Nicholas Sarkozy's visit has been
well-covered in the press, but we thought it might be useful to
offer some musings on the visit and its impact in Brazzaville.
Contextually, Paris is extremely important to Congo(B). The
upper crust of Congolese society seems to view itself
collectively as more French than Congolese. Everyone who has
the money to do so owns an apartment or a house in Paris. Many
ministers in Sassou's government and the top business people
seem to commute from Paris to work in Brazzaville; many in
Sassou's cabinet use French roaming cellphones as their main
means of communication, so they can receive calls in Paris as
easily as in Brazzaville. We are told on impeccable authority
that the head of Congolese Customs lives in Paris and is served
by a twice-weekly messenger service for documents that he must
sign.

(SBU) Sarkozy's message: We are not up on the nuances of his
Dakar and Cape Town speeches, which he seemed to "clarify and
complete" during his remarks in Brazzaville, but his main
message in Brazzaville was one of partnership and equality,
conducted transparently in general and in particular with the
publication of all military and defense agreements in Africa.
Evoking the long history between France and Congo(B),citing
Pierre Savorgnan de Brazza and Charles de Gaulle, Sarkozy
pointed toward the future and toward a large number of French
investors lining up to do business in Congo(B). He promised
France's support for HIPC debt relief and offered continuing
support for Congo Basin environment and conservation efforts
(linked to climate change and global warming).

(SBU) Politically, so far as we can tell, Sarkozy has only met
Congo's President Denis Sassou-Nguesso once, during Sassou's
2007 visit to Paris. The most important political fact of
Sarkozy's visit was that it occurred just 100 days prior to
Congo(B)'s presidential election. Sarkozy made an effort to
mitigate the perception that he had come to praise Sassou; in
his speech to Parliament (where Sassou was not present),he said
the right thing: "France does not support any candidate~.I have
not come to do this~The French people would not understand it,
and the Africans would not accept it." And he made an effort to
meet a sampling of the opposition, apparently telling them
(according to press reports) that he supported an election in a
calm atmosphere and that he believed the opposition and the
government should conduct a dialogue to achieve this objective.
(The opposition spokesman, Pascal Tsaty Mabiala, seized on the
point of dialogue, their main desideratum, in his remarks to the
press, and subsequently the government proposed that the
dialogue occur on April 11 or 14; the opposition is still
griping in public about the proposed agenda, since it doesn't a
priori concede all their demands regarding a truly independent
electoral commission, a census, etc.)

(SBU) Results of the visit: One very interesting agreement was
signed, finalizing a loan of approximately 30 million euro from
the French development agency (signed by Secretary of State for
Cooperation and Francophone affairs Alain Joyandet) to the Port
of Pointe-Noire (signed by the Director General of the Port).
Part of the funding will be provided by the European Development
Bank, the Central African Development Bank, and the European
Fund for Infrastructure in Africa. The loan, with a term of 15
years with a 5-year grace period, is intended to finance
infrastructure improvements at the Port (see below). The
interesting part, however, is the explicit and direct

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association of this loan to the December grant of a 27-year
concession to French transport/shipping giant (at least in
Africa) Groupe Bollore to operate the container terminal at
Pointe-Noire. Though Sarkozy and Sassou witnessed the signing,
the loan repayment is entirely an obligation of the Port
authority, apparently without a Congo government guarantee. No
further terms of the loan have been released.

(SBU) Miscellany: Even Sarkozy's morning jog down the cornice
(with four burly French bodyguards and several Congolese) has
been a subject of commentary, with one editorialist noting that
his safe excursion into the center of town contrasted sharply
with those who say Congo(B) is in a crisis (and thus implicitly
making the argument that Sassou has brought "peace" to
Congo(B)).

Transport: We noticed with some envy that Sarkozy landed at
Maya Maya Airport in a French military helicopter (one of three
that transported the party),sitting on a side-facing seat with
the door open. We wish we had been able to take that trip, for
the fantastic view he must have had crossing the river from that
vantage point. Even this point attracted commentary, with an
opposition-oriented paper wondering whether he needed the
helicopters for protection under current circumstances in
Congo(B),and offering an unfavorable comparison to his arrival
in the DRC on a civilian-style aircraft.

Mrs. Sarkozy: Despite much anticipation and expectation, she
didn't show up. Had she come here, the visit would have taken a
much more exciting and glamorous tone.
French residents left out: We have heard a great deal of
griping by French residents here, both from the French official
mission and the private sector, that they were provided no
opportunity to "grip and grin" with the French President. Those
who have unloaded on us (and to the press, in one instance) are
resentful that their efforts to do their work, or make their
investments profit, in a difficult environment, were not
recognized. We have the impression that the petroleum sector
(Total and its contractors) and some of the larger companies
(CFAO, for example) were quite well represented at the dinner
hosted by Sassou, especially those whose principals were
included in the delegation. But the worker bees are buzzing
unhappily. One who wasn't left out was French Ambassador
Nicolas Normand, who left Friday night for Paris with the
objective, we understand, of finding his next diplomatic
assignment.

MORE ON THE PORT OF POINTE-NOIRE
--------------

2. (U) During the visit of President Sarkozy, the Director
General of the Autonomous Port of Pointe-Noire, Jean-Marie
Aniele, spoke of the plans for the infrastructure improvements
of the port (mentioned above).

A German consultant is preparing the terms of reference for a
tender to be issued later this year, for a three-year program of
work involving extending the basin by 300 meters, with
accompanying extension of the quai and dredging alongside. At
the same time, the main channel will be dredged to 15 meters
(currently it is approximately 11 meters),to enable the port to
accept vessels carrying up to seven thousand containers.

Aniele emphasized that Groupe Bollore had not taken a concession
on the entire port, only the container operation. He noted that
the loan from the French development agency had been under
negotiation since 2003. COMMENT: Undoubtedly, the Bollore
concession helped speed things up. END COMMENT.

BILATERAL US-CONGO(B) TRADE PATTERNS, OR "IT'S ALL ABOUT OIL~AND
CHICKENS"
-------------- --------------
--------------

3. (SBU) While researching the Investment Climate report (on
the wires April 1),we had occasion to review the detailed
Congolese Customs figures for bilateral trade between the United
States and the Congo(B). Note: All numbers in this article are
rough, since we are converting figures in FCFA to dollars and
have arbitrarily decided to use a rate of 500 FCFA to the
dollar, which will achieve the purpose of comparison herein.
The average during the year, or on any particular valuation

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moment, will be different.

Congolese Exports to U.S.: USD 639,010,460
Of which
Crude Oil: USD 633,918,366
Balance minus crude: USD 5,092,094
Of which
wood/woodproducts: USD 1,151,750

The balance is scattered across a large number of customs
categories, with no single category of a value larger than USD
800,000, and that one item is drilling equipment. We believe
the remaining $4 million or so of Congolese exports to the U.S.
are oil production items being returned to the U.S. for repair,
refurbishment, or redeployment by the oil service companies.

In sharp contrast, following is a summary of U.S. exports to
Congo(B):
U.S.-origin imports: USD 63,132,321
Of which:
pipes, oil and gas: USD 13,587,687
Frozen chicken parts: USD 5,763,590
Drilling equipment: USD 5,760,000
Generators/parts: USD 2,721,000
Pipe Valves/joints: USD 2,435,872

Note that U.S. exports to Congo(B) amount to only 10% of exports
in the other direction. With respect to the categories
enumerated above, we cite these large items simply as examples,
since most of the items on the customs document are in the
categories of industrial equipment, various chemicals, etc.,
making it clear that most of U.S. exports to Congo, like Congo's
exports to the U.S., are related to the petroleum production
here.

But there is a tiny bit of diversification: The second largest
category of U.S. exports to Congo, falling between oil piping
and drilling spare parts (2 billion FCFA) is frozen chicken
parts, which racked up sales in Congo(B) of 2.88 billion FCFA,
around USD 5.7 million. Food (with frozen chicken parts in the
lead, with a volume of 3.8 million kilograms) amounted to about
10% of Congo's total imports from the United States. Other U.S
exports to Congo are scattered through a very large number of
customs classifications in quite small amounts. We particularly
enjoyed the item "articles de friperie" (used clothing, we
think) which amounted to nearly $1 million.

VENEZUELA OPENS RESIDENT EMBASSY IN BRAZZAVILLE
-------------- --

4. (SBU) Press accounts report the presentation of credentials
March 28 of a resident charge(e) d'affaires of the Bolivarian
Republic of Venezuela, Josefina Magdelena Simone Viera. She
will be resident in Brazzaville, upgrading Venezuela's presence
here from its former representation by a non-resident charge'
based in Luanda. In the presentation meeting with the Foreign
Minister, she noted that Brazzaville would be Venezuela's 18 the
resident presence in Africa and that it had been established
pursuant to the agreement of April 6, 2006 establishing
diplomatic relations between Caracas and Brazzaville. During
Foreign Minister Ikouebe's visit to Caracas in December, 2008,
the two countries signed an assistance agreement covering
activities in housing, health infrastructure, and schools, based
on a Venezuelan program called "school sponsorship in Africa"
(parrainage d'une ecole en Afrique, in French). Construction of
one school, in Gamboma in Plateaux Department (north) has
already begun. A second agreement signed during Ikouebe's visit
was a procedural MOU regarding political consultations between
the Congolese and Venezuelan ministries of external relations.

(SBU) COMMENT: Venezuela's approach to the continent is very
much like Iran's, seemingly focused on resident embassies in
fellow petroleum producing countries, with a small but highly
visible assistance package to provide public diplomacy
opportunities, political oomph, and goodwill. There seems to be
a complementary program of small (again highly-visible)
assistance activities in the non-petroleum countries. Though it
may sound somewhat old-fashioned, it works. Venezuela's purpose
in Congo(B) is without a doubt intended to enlist another
"anti-imperialist" ally, in a country where that sort of
nonsense is still very much part of public discourse. END

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COMMENT.

FIRST CONVICTION FOR WILDLIFE TRAFFICKING
--------------

5. (U) We are extremely pleased to note that a Brazzaville
court on March 19 sentenced a wildlife trafficker to a year in
prison, a 100,000 FCFA fine, and a 1,000,000 FCFA damages and
interest payment to the Ministry of Forest Economy. The
trafficker was arrested on December 30 while trying to sell a
live chimpanzee, a protected species under Congolese law. This
represents the first such conviction, ever, in Congo(B) and
augurs well for the prospects of the the John Aspinall
Foundation forest law enforcement program. This program, to be
partially funded, we understand, by the US Fish and Wildlife
Service via a grant to the Wildlife Conservation Society, has
hired investigators, lawyers and a press person to support
Congo(B) efforts to bring wildlife traffickers to justice here.
There are eight other cases pending in court in Brazzaville.

WEIRD STUFF
--------------

6. (SBU) TIBET, ANYONE? We see in the papers here that the
Chinese Ambassador had a press conference this week to
commemorate the "day of the liberation of the Tibetan serfs"
(sic),accompanied by a documentary film. Weirdest part of it
was that he said, and we quote, "the main concern of the Chinese
government at the time was the peaceful liberation of Tibet,
which had for a long time been under the domination of
imperialist forces." COMMENT: We think the Dalai Lama would be
amused were he to learn that he was an "imperialist." Or that
he had owned six thousand slaves, as the Ambassador went on to
explain. END COMMENT.


7. (SBU) Who's in charge? We took a holiday on Friday, March
20, to conform to the national mourning declared for the arrival
of the remains of Edith Bongo, President Sassou's daughter and
First Lady of Gabon. We responded to the announcement from the
Ministry responsible, but it turns out there was a separate
announcement from the Prime Minister's office declaring that it
would not/not be a holiday, thus engendering massive confusion
in town. In some neighborhoods, mainly those through which the
cortege was supposed to pass on the way from the airport to the
President's residence at Mpila, the police and gendarmes were
enforcing a holiday by asking merchants to close their stores.
In others, it was business as usual (to the extent such was
possible with VIP movements all day long).
EASTHAM