MALTA SUPPORTIVE ON IRAN SANCTIONS, DATA SHARING,

C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 04 VALLETTA 000069 SIPDIS DEPARTMENT FOR NEA/FO ECATALANO AND ISN/RA RNEPHEW DEPARTMENT ALSO FOR S/CT PSCHULTZ, EUR/ERA ANARDI, L/LEI KPROPP, A/GIS/IPS/PRV CTHOMAS, PM/SNA KAMEND AND USEU/ECON LSNYDER JUSTICE FOR TBURROWS AND MWARREN DHS FOR MSCARDAVILLE AND JKROPF AND JBEDNARZ TREASURY FOR FOR JYOO AND CGREENE E.O. 12958: DECL: 02/02/2020 TAGS: AF ECON ECPS EUN IR KCRM KHLS KPAO KTIA MT NATO, PARM, PGOV, PREL, PTER, KTFN, CON, UNSC SUBJECT: MALTA SUPPORTIVE ON IRAN SANCTIONS, DATA SHARING, AND AFGHANISTAN; OPEN TO PFP SOFA REF: A. STATE 09124 ¶B. STATE 8403 Classified By: Ambassador Douglas W. Kmiec For reasons 1.4 (B) AND (D) ¶1. (C) Summary: On February 1 Ambassador Kmiec met with Maltese Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Tonio Borg to discuss a wide range of curently pending issues and U.S. Government requests. Results of the meeting include (1) a Maltese commitment to train Afghan civil servants; (2) Malta's agreement to support future international sanctions, and to consider US requests for unilateral sanctions in due course, against Iran if it persists in noncompliance with international agreements relating to its nuclear program; (3) Malta's agreement that U.S. and EU data privacy regimes are essentially comparable and that the Terrorist Financing Tracking Program should continue; and (4) an indication that Malta will move forward toward likely signature of the NATO Partnership for Peace SOFA Agreement. GOM to Support the Civilian &Surge8 in Afghanistan -------------- -------------- ¶2. (SBU) Ambassador offered the thanks of the United States to DPM/FM Borg for Malta,s contribution to the effort to have a &civil surge8 in Afghanistan by agreeing to contribute 50-60,000 euro to train Afghan civil servants. The Foreign Minister indicated that he recognized the amount was modest but it was significant in terms of healthy relationships between the GOM and the United States ) a matter which the FM said he explicitly addressed in a meeting of the European diplomatic corps in Malta during the time the Ambassador was in Washington, D.C. for the Chief of Mission conference. The Ambassador again indicated his appreciation on behalf of President Obama, and related to the FM how Ambassador Holbrooke had stressed at the COM conference the importance assigned to any size donation. Borg expressed the hope that the donation could be made &in kind8 or at least not more than half donated in Euros, but that in any event, the Foreign Minister appreciated the effort being made by President Obama, which he said amounted to &the last best hope8 to bring stability and needed security to the region. ¶3. (SBU) Foreign Minister Borg also indicated that consideration of Malta,s constitutionally-mandated neutrality, properly understood, did not affect Malta,s ability to be part of the effort to bring stability to Afghanistan since there was no pre-arranged defense pact that was being implemented and no military installation of a foreign power was being located on the sovereign territory of Malta. The FM said the neutrality debate has now blossomed into a full-scale national re-examination of Malta,s role in foreign affairs. In particular, the FM indicated that he had accepted a debate of the issue in general in the Parliament,s Foreign and European Affairs Committee February ¶2. The FM, together with Parliamentary Secretary for Public Dialogue and Information Christopher Said and the Prime Minister,s Defense Advisor, Vanessa Frazier (who holds a position which in substance is the equivalent of the Defense Secretary to Malta),will square off against Michael Frendo, a Nationalist MP and Chairman of the Committee, who has opposed an expansion of Malta,s role. Future sanctions actions on Iran -------------- ¶4. (SBU) In the same meeting, pursuant to Ref A, Ambassador Kmiec met with the FM for the purpose of ascertaining and discussing the government of Malta,s position with respect to recent efforts to address Iran,s noncompliance with UNSC sanctions and related agreements. After having outlined Ref A points -- the failure of the Iran government to support the IAEA proposal for refueling the Tehran research reactor; Iran,s failure to facilitate the IAEA,s full investigation of its previously clandestine uranium enrichment plant at Qom; Iran, failure to meet with the P5 1 before the end of October on nuclear issues; and the increasing humanitarian concern with Iran,s basic disregard of civil liberty (e.g., the execution and jailing of government protestors that very VALLETTA 00000069 002 OF 004 afternoon) -- Ambassador Kmiec requested that the Government of Malta (GOM) support the United States, as needed, in the enforcement of existing sanctions, and were that to prove insufficient, in the pursuit and implementation of appropriate new sanctions. ¶5. (C) In response to the request of the United States, the FM indicated that it is always Malta,s preference to act multilaterally. For this reason, Malta certainly would support the UNSC sanctions as they presently exist and apply. Likewise, should Iran continue its urananium enrichment in ways strongly suggesting a nuclear weapon to be the purpose, the GOM would support new, &budget targeted8 sanctions that could be shown by the USG to have likely influence. ¶6. (C) With respect to magnifying the impact of new Security Council resolutions by undertaking unilateral efforts (by way of example) to freeze the assets of IRISL (now doing business in Malta as Royal Mediterranean Shipping) or to go even further and freeze assets of companies doing business with IRISL, GOM is unlikely at this point to see the necessity of such action, but would remain open to it. Again, the FM said, sanctions ought to be &judiciously and proportionately8 applied and only as &a last resort.8 Unilateral actions could well harm the interest of the U.S. and others working to limit the spread of nuclear weaponry, the FM argued, since closing the Maltese port would just push Iran to another Mediterranean venue which would presumably be available and outside the reach of Western consideration. Nevertheless, the Foreign Minister stressed that unilateral actions were not impossible to conceive, since, after all, Malta already has unilaterally directed its banks to be wary of, if not outright decline, Iranian deposits. ¶7. (C) Ambassador Kmiec reassured the Foreign Minister that there would be a continuation of diplomatic efforts with Iran, and these would be suspended only after the application of a reasonable deadline, and then, in accordance with the direction of the President, and then only reluctantly. In other words, it is fair to see the Malta approach as coincident with the U.S. approach of carefully applied sanctions pursued only when all reasonable prospects for diplomatic agreement had been exhausted. However, the Ambassador stressed that patience is wearing thin in Washington, with noncompliance of the government of Iran together with suggestions that the acquisition of materials necessary for nuclear weapons are proceeding apace, with any &dissenting voices8 eliminated or dispatched by the harshest of means. The Foreign Minister said the United States could count on the government of Malta ¬ to unilaterally block8 any effort at new sanction through the &GOM voice.8 Presumably this would be an assurance not to block consensus at any EU forum seized of the issue. Sharing of Terrorist Information and Data Privacy -------------- -------------- ¶8. (SBU) On a third topic, Ambassador, per Ref B, raised the issue of the protection of data privacy as the U.S. and EU endeavored to share information on terrorists. Describing at some length the initiatives whereby the United States had seemingly reached significant common ground with European Union on issues of data privacy, the Ambassador advised the FM that, nevertheless, there may be an effort afoot to undo this substantial agreement by fostering a misunderstating or misstatement of the differences between the US and EU regimes. The EU and U.S. data privacy regimes are different in means, but they are sufficiently compatible in substantive direction, that one cannot be said to be greatly more protective of practical privacy than the other. Moreover, to overstate data privacy differences is to underappreciate the importance of trans-Atlantic justice and law enforcement relations of obtaining and sharing information. ¶9. (SBU) Ambassador Kmiec alerted the Foreign Mister that on or about February 9, the Terrorist Financing Tracking Program(TFTP) would be coming up for a vote in the European Parliament (EP). Suggesting that the TFTP may be at risk of being vetoed by the Parliament, Ambassador Kmiec asked the VALLETTA 00000069 003 OF 004 GOM to discourage this effort. The FM agreed that Malta would not undermine the common ground that reasonably assured citizen privacy, even as the protection of data was differently accomplished in the United States in the European Union. The FM noted, following the Ambassador,s discussion, that he was glad to know that the US protections do extend to anyone within the jurisdiction of the United States whether they be citizens or noncitizens, even as the U.S. protections are often mischaracterized as applying only to American citizens. ¶10. (SBU) Again, the Ambassador alerted the Foreign Minister that the EP,s internal discussions may be continuing to overstate the difference of privacy protection between the European Union and the United States, and the Ambassador hoped that the GOM would not be scared off. In particular, with respect to the interim TFTP agreement signed by the United States an the EU on November 30, 2009 which had been scheduled to provisionally enter into force after signature but before ratification on February 1, 2010 and expire no later than October 31, 2010, the Ambassador asked the FM that the GOM either support the ratification of the agreement &as is & in light of the dozen or so common principles protecting privacy between the United States and EU or, should the EP debate raise a doubt as to the extent to which the United States adequately protects data privacy that the GOM would not oppose the agreement per se, but instead merely vote to delay the ratification of the TFTP program for nine months through the expedient of adopting a nonbinding resolution raising any doubt over the sufficiency of the privacy protection, as Malta might then see it. ¶11. (SBU) The Foreign Minister indicated that while there may be doubts about the protection of privacy under the agreement; if there was opposition of the type the Ambassador described, the GOM would very likely vote to delay the vote on the ratification rather than vote against the agreement and its ratification itself. The Foreign Minister said that he would alert Mr. Simon Busuttil who is the European People,s Party Coordinator in the European Parliament,s Committee for Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs (the LIBE Committee),since it is there where the FM anticipated an issue such of this would be scrutinized before emergence on the floor of the EP. Partnership for Peace (PfP) SOFA -------------- ¶12. (C) Finally, Ambassador and FM Borg discussed outside of the presence of note takers the prospect of Malta executing the PfP SOFA. The Foreign Minister indicated that the Prime Minister was now prepared to go forward, provided that the Foreign Minister and Ambassador Kmiec agree on terms. The Ambassador clarified that it is important to understand the framework of the process; specifically, that the Ambassador is not representing the &other side8; nor for that matter is the State Department. Indeed, the Ambassador said a good way to conceive of the PfP SOFA is as the basic &rules of the road8 (or in this case, territorial sea). Moreover, that process occurs under the auspices of the Partnership for Peace office of NATO, and under the supervision of a NATO legal adviser. In short, the Foreign Minister was requested to execute the NATO/PfP SOFA and advised it was not up to the US Government to accept or reject any reservations, but to NATO. ¶13. (C) While recognizing that Malta has concerns pertaining to sovereign jurisdiction and some national laws (e.g., relating to the wearing of uniforms, carrying of weapons, etc.),which are contrary to PfP SOFA provisions, Ambassador Kmiec urged the FM not to make any gratuitous reservation or modification to the standard document if at all possible, and he promised to forward a copy by messenger. The FM said he appreciated that the document (i.e., Article VII on jurisdiction) was a great improvement over the &one sided8 document which had been presented to GOM by the U.S. several years ago. This is critical to progress on this issue said the FM, since matters should go well &unless the opposition stirs up the anger and suspicion among the public through the VALLETTA 00000069 004 OF 004 NATO label.8 Ambassador Kmiec reminded the FM that other neutral nations, such as Switzerland and Sweden, had executed a version of the PfP SOFA, as had Russia. The Ambassador said he was personally willing to comment upon the proposed interlineations of the FM, but that ultimately, it was the NATO legal representative in Brussels that would accept Malta,s subscription to the Agreement for &NATO8 ) an acronym the FM said he wished could be kept out as much as possible of the public discussion. KMIEC