DPRK DRAFT RESOLUTION - VIETNAM LIKELY TO SUPPORT,

C O N F I D E N T I A L HANOI 000545 SENSITIVE SIPDIS E.O. 12958: DECL: 06/12/2019 TAGS: PARM PREL PGOV UNSC KN VM SUBJECT: DPRK DRAFT RESOLUTION - VIETNAM LIKELY TO SUPPORT, BUT REGRETS LACK OF CONSULTATION REF: A. STATE 60616 ¶B. HANOI 101 Classified By: CDA Virginia Palmer. Reasons: 1.4 (b/d) ¶1. (C) Charge delivered reftel demarche to MFA Director General for International Organizations Le Hoai Trung June ¶12. Vietnam shares our concerns about DPRK actions, Trung said. He complained, however, that the MFA had received the draft resolution only 24 hours before and required approval from five or six of Vietnam,s top leaders. "Just one of them wouldn't be sufficient," he said. He asked for patience but suggested Vietnam would support the Resolution "as a gesture of our utmost cooperation." ¶2. (C) The Vice Foreign Minister stayed in the office until close to midnight to review the circular , Trung said. Deputy Prime Minister (and Foreign Minister) Pham Gia Khiem read it first thing this morning, Trung said, and Trung had been on the phone with the staffs of the Prime Minister, Secretary General of the Community Party, President, and Chairman of the National Assembly all day. In addition, "if we want to be serious about compliance with the Resolution," Trang said, sanctions provisions would require approval from nearly ten ministries, including the State Bank of Vietnam, Ministry of Finance, Ministry of Defense, Ministry of Public Security, Ministry of Telecommunications, Ministry of Industry and Commerce and the Customs Department, in order to avoid poor compliance. ¶3. (C) Comment: Trung said he understood how the UN works and how tough the negotiations on the Resolution had been in New York. "We do not want to look like we are being difficult," he said, "but when negotiations go on for two weeks and we get less than 36 hours to have a cleared position, we have trouble explaining to our senior leadership that Vietnam's approval is not being taken for granted and that we are not, in effect, being granted an ultimatum." We would add that while Vietnam will all but certainly join consensus on this resolution, short-fuse votes like this without early consultation require the MFA to exhaust its (very) scarce political capital with Vietnam's senior leaders, and this could hurt U.S. interests in other areas. End comment. PALMER