Ecuador UNASUR meeting

C O N F I D E N T I A L SANTIAGO 000849

SIPDIS

E.O. 12958: DECL: 2019/09/16
TAGS: PREL CI
SUBJECT: Ecuador UNASUR meeting

CLASSIFIED BY: Paul E. Simons, Ambassador; REASON: 1.4(B),(D)


1. (C) On September 16, Ambassador spoke briefly with Foreign
Minister Fernandez, Defense Minister Vidal, and Defense
Undersecretary Garcia about the September 15 UNASUR ministerial in
Quito.




2. (C) According to Fernandez, the meeting was extremely
difficult and produced no consensus.



-- The Colombian Defense and Foreign Ministers were unwilling to
accommodate any requests for follow-on information on the DCA, in
particular from the Brazilians, who were looking for written
assurances regarding the protections in the agreement on
cross-border activities.



--The Colombians insisted verbally that the agreement was benign
but were unwilling to go further. In Fernandez' view, the
Colombians could easily provide some preambular language that would
go a long way to satisfy Brazil's concerns, but were thoroughly dug
in.



--Fernandez thought the Secretary's pre-Bariloche UNASUR letter was
very helpful, and he said he even read it aloud to his fellow
Ministers at the meeting (none of whom had apparently seen the
letter ahead of time). Fernandez is interested in seeing whether
we might be willing to follow up on the offer in the letter for
further consultations to clarify portions of the DCA. Fernandez
will be in Washington September 21 and hopes to raise some of these
concerns with Department officials.



--Separately, Defense Undersecretary Garcia (who represented the
MOD) was even more pessimistic about the Quito meeting, noting that
UNASUR was in a crisis and that it would be difficult to move
behind current dug in positions. Defense Minister Vidal (who
skipped the meeting) said he made the right choice to avoid what
was clearly an unproductive session.
SIMONS