SCENESETTER FOR SENATOR MITCHELL'S VISIT TO PARIS

S E C R E T SECTION 01 OF 03 PARIS 000769

NOFORN
SIPDIS

E.O. 12958: DECL: 06/08/2014
TAGS: PGOV PREL FR
SUBJECT: SCENESETTER FOR SENATOR MITCHELL'S VISIT TO PARIS

Classified By: Charge d'Affaires Mark A. Pekala, for reasons 1.4 (b)
and (d).


1. (S/NF) Summary. Senator Mitchell: The timing of your
second visit to Paris could not be better. You will find
your interlocutors energized by the President,s speech in
Cairo and his subsequent visit to Paris and Normandy. They
will be eager to follow up on the President,s bilat with
President Sarkozy, and will be especially eager to hear about
your discussions in Syria. Above all, they look forward to
getting a sense of your strategy for the next 6-12 months,
and will want to know how they and other like-minded European
states can contribute to the success of your efforts. End
summary.

Strong Support on the Peace Process
--------------


2. (S/NF) Thanks in part to your visit here on Feb. 2, the
frequent phone contact between French NSA Jean-David Levitte
and NSA James Jones, and the subsequent visits by Under
Secretary Burns, A A/S Feltman and others, the French are
more responsive than ever on the broad range of our mutual
interests in the Middle East. Sarkozy, for example,
delivered a verbal thrashing to Iranian FM Mottaki on June 3,
calling President Ahmadinejad,s statements on the Holocaust
) delivered immediately before Mottaki,s call at the Elyse
) &a diplomatic insult,8 stressing that there is no chance
of dividing France and its allies on the nuclear question,
warning that Iran,s current course will lead to disaster,
and calling upon the Iranians to take advantage of the
historic opportunity provided by the President,s opening.
Sarkozy was personally impressed by the President,s handling
of Prime Minister Netanyahu,s visit to Washington, which his
staff described as &masterful.8 The French President will
likely adopt the same approach ) friendly but frank )
during a pending visit by Netanyahu. &We are 100%
supportive of your efforts,8 Sarkozy,s Middle East advisor
told us recently.


3. (S/NF) Indeed, the French have quietly abandoned their
attempt to get the EU to stake out a more flexible position
on dealing with Hamas, and have reluctantly conceded that
Sarkozy,s plans for a peace conference in Paris are not
going to materialize in the near term. The only remaining
point on which there is any daylight between our positions is
on the question of timing: Sarkozy continues to fret about
the pace of the process and believes strongly in the need for
Western leaders to push the parties toward final status
talks. Although he does not hide his sense that the U.S.
approach (i.e., creating the conditions for successful
negotiations before moving to the negotiations themselves) is
overly cautious, you should read that less as a criticism of
U.S. diplomacy than a reflection of his distrust of the
parties. He firmly believes that, given the opportunity,
extremists on both sides will find ways to poison the
atmosphere for talks. Consequently, he favors a more
directive approach in which the President, backed by
like-minded European leaders, would tell the parties &enough
is enough8 and perhaps even impose the parameters of a deal.


Syria
--------------


4. (S/NF) The French view our cautious outreach to Syria with
a mixture of ambivalence and bemusement. On the one hand,
they are delighted that the U.S. is finally engaging Damascus
) you may detect a certain sense of vindication from your
interlocutors, who see our engagement as confirmation that
Sarkozy,s policy was both correct and far-sighted. On the
other hand, the French are mindful that their own currency
has diminished somewhat in Damascus: they recognize that the
Syrian regime,s focus now is on Washington, not Paris.
Heavily influenced by the Syrian account of the
Feltman/Shapiro visits, the French are puzzled by ) and
politely critical of ) the pace of our engagement.
Tactically, they believe that Washington shot itself in the
foot by sending Feltman/Shapiro back to Damascus for a second
round of talks without any deliverables and as the harbingers
of bad news (i.e., the renewal of U.S. sanctions).
Strategically, they wonder whether Washington has a clear
vision of the relationship it wants with a regime that
remains unlikely to curb its sponsorship of Hamas or
Hizballah in a meaningful way.


5. (S/NF) The easiest way to address these concerns is to
emphasize that we are engaging deliberately and carefully to
produce a concrete change of behavior ) just as Sarkozy did.
Whereas for Paris the key benchmark was the establishment of

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normal diplomatic relations between Lebanon and Syria, for
Washington a crucial litmus test is Syrian performance on
preventing foreign fighters from entering Iraq. You should
be candid with Levitte about Syria,s failure to perform in
this regard; Bill Burns was on May 14. The French are
unlikely to directly challenge your assessment, although they
may note that Prime Minister Maliki (who visited Paris on May
4) left them with a more favorable impression of Syrian
efforts to secure the border. When A/S Feltman was here on
May 20, he stressed to the French that there are limits to
how the U.S. relationship with Damascus will evolve in the
absence of better Syrian performance on Iraq. You may wish
to expand on this point so that the French understand our
approach is serious, disciplined, and riveted to concrete
benchmarks. If you think it would be helpful for the French
to reinforce any of the points you made in Damascus, they
would be happy to do so ) the French very much want to be
seen by both parties as helping to broker improved relations
between Washington and Damascus.


Lebanon
--------------


6. (S/NF) By the time you arrive in Paris, the French will
have had several days to digest the results of the Lebanese
elections. The French had anticipated that March 8 would
perform slightly better than March 14. They also hoped that
independent MPs aligned with President Sleiman would emerge
as a significant third force in the new parliament, and thus
provide an escape from the polarization that has
characterized Lebanese politics over the past four years.
They continue to invest heavily in Sleiman and bristled when
the Lebanese opposition began muttering a few weeks ago about
ousting Sleiman on a constitutional technicality and
replacing him post-election with Michel Aoun.

What You Can Achieve
--------------


7. (S/NF) In addition to any other messages you may plan to
deliver, it might be helpful to address three points during
your engagement with Levitte:

Debunk the notion that the President,s approach is not
ambitious/fast enough: You can emphasize that we have moved
beyond the &policy review8 period and are now engaging
actively with the parties to lay the groundwork for
successful negotiations. You may also wish to point out how
the President,s matter-of-fact approach to the problem of
settlements has won broad support and reshaped the
conventional political wisdom in the U.S.

Outline your plan: Now that the Israelis have publicly
balked at the Administration,s call for a complete freeze on
settlements, the French await your thoughts on next steps.
While they understand the U.S. is not seeking to generate a
crisis with Israel, the French would not shed any tears if
Netanyahu,s government collapsed and he were obliged to form
a coalition with Kadima. The French will also be interested
in sharing thoughts on how to &operationalize8 the Arab
Peace Initiative.

Tell the French how they and other EU states can help: The
French have gotten the message that they are not the main
player on the peace process, and have begun to reconcile
themselves to a supporting role. But they still want to play
a role, and do not want to be relegated to tin-cup exercises,
such as pressing the Arab Gulf states to regularize their
budgetary support to the Palestinian Authority (although they
recognize that there is a real need for such support). They
would respond enthusiastically if you were to ask them to
take on an assignment requiring political creativity, such as
developing an action plan for reopening closed Palestinian
institutions in East Jerusalem (as per the Roadmap),or
thinking about how to modernize and expand the mandate of the
Multi-National Force Observers in the Sinai.

Final Thoughts
--------------


8. (S/NF) While the French are generally quite professional
when it comes to high level exchanges, they have their leaks
as well. This is less a problem at the Elyse than at the
ministries, so you can be more candid with Levitte than you
would be in an expanded meeting at the MFA.

Good luck with your travels in the region. We look forward
to welcoming you again to Paris.


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Best regards,

Pekala
PEKALA