Cablegate: Usunesco: Unesco Cultural Diversity

This record is a partial extract of the original cable. The full text of the original cable is not available.

UNCLAS SECTION 01 OF 03 PARIS 007128

SIPDIS

SENSITIVE

FROM USMISSION UNESCO PARIS
STATE PASS USTR C.BLISS, S. MCCOY
NSC B. WILLIAMS

E.O. 12958: N/A
TAGS: ETRD PREL SCUL BR JA FR UNESCO
SUBJECT: USUNESCO: UNESCO CULTURAL DIVERSITY
CONVENTION RECEIVES PRELIMINARY APPROVAL

1. Summary. The UNESCO preliminary draft convention on
cultural diversity was approved with an overwhelming
majority on October 17 by the General Conference
Commission IV (culture) and will now be sent to the
plenary for a vote on Thursday where it will almost
certainly be approved. U.S. attempts to amend the
text were soundly rebuffed by a coalition led by the
EU, Canada and Brazil . A draft resolution designed
to give a fig leaf to Japanese support of the
convention was also passed. End summary.

2. The October 17 meeting of Commission IV (culture)
was a love fest attended by at least 15 culture
ministers. More than 100 countries expressed their
support for the convention and the need to get it
passed as soon as possible. Voices counseling
dialogue were few and far between.

3. While most interventions could be roughly described
as "this convention will bring the end of suffering
and poverty to the world," a few are worthy of note:

A) South African culture minister (speaking for all
African states), "this is not a trade agreement."
B) Canadian heritage minister, the convention will
be implemented "in full respect of existing
international commitments."
C) Mexican culture minister, "we want to select
which cultural products we consume" (while still
exporting our products to other countries.)
D) UK ambassador (speaking for EU member states and
aspirants), "difficulties remain for one state (the
U.S.)...dialogue has continued we greatly value the
return of the U.S. to UNESCO as we are committed to
the same principles and valuesthis is a disagreement
t
between member states and UNESCO should not be
blamed." (comment: the statement about dialogue was a
disingenuous attempt to categorize for other member
states our discussions with the UK as negotiations,
when there has been no willingness at all by EU states
to reopen the convention.)
E) Turkish ambassador, this is an acceptable
compromise and Turkey has no reservations. (note: we
were told earlier that the convention actually
violates the Turkish constitution but intense EU
pressure forced the Turkish government to withdraw
their earlier reservation.)

5. At the same time the media campaign has heated up.
US Ambassador to UNESCO, Louise Oliver, did a media
availability attended primarily by Canadian and French
press (NY Times did attend and will write on
Thursday). A scheduled joint press conference by the
French, Brazilian, Canadian and Senegalese culture
ministers was cancelled over a dispute between the UK
and France over who should speak about the convention.
EU internal rules have heretofore prohibited member
states from speaking about the issue and have reserved
that right for the presidency. Regardless of the
rules, the conference is now reportedly rescheduled
for Thursday at the French ministry of culture. (note:
the French culture minister was quoted in the French
press on Monday as saying that with the passage of the
convention, France will no longer be the "black sheep"
of l'exception culturelle, once again reinforcing the
U.S. contention that the convention has been about
trade all along.)

6. We have reported septel about the shape of the
voting and about those few brave countries that either
dared to vote in support of the U.S. position or
abstain. We have also reported on Japan's unseemly
haste to sign onto the convention. While we gained
scant support for the 28 U.S. amendments to the
convention, the U.S. delegation was able to present
each of its amendments and put them to a vote. The
refusal to reopen the convention was so strong that
among the amendments voted down was a proposal to add
"respect for" to the words cultural diversity in the
preamble and "in conformity with other international
obligations" in other operative articles.

7. (SBU) (comment) for those readers who remain
perplexed why the United States has not been able to
join in a convention about cultural diversity, we
suggest that you type the terms cultural diversity and
diversite culturelle into an internet search engine.
You will find that in English the term primarily
refers to cultural and ethnic diversity as understood
by Americans. The latter will yield results about
anti-globalism, l'exception culturelle and American
cultural hegemony. Despite its high sounding
language, the UNESCO convention has really been about
the latter.

8. (SBU) (comment continued) as we have said in
previous messages, this convention is what happens
when culture ministers are allowed to make foreign and
trade policy. Unfortunately, despite our best
efforts, a poorly written document full of ambiguities
on key points and with potential to cause serious
mischief in the areas of trade and human rights is
within days of passage.
9. (SBU) (comment continued) it has been pointed out
to us by several delegations that one of the fault
lines running through the convention is the broad
language on the importance of minority and indigenous
populations contained in the preamble while the
operant language gives states the sovereign right to
impose a national culture on their populations.

10. (SBU) (comment continued) the role of the EU and
EC in promoting this convention is noteworthy. The
convention only needs ratification by 30 parties (as
opposed to states parties) to come into effect and
these parties can include "regional economic
integration organizations," effectively giving the EC
a form of additionality. We are also concerned that
representatives of EU member states at UNESCO, acting
in concert with Canada and Brazil, worked hard and
enthusiastically to thwart the U.S. at every turn to
ensure a sizable vote against any U.S. attempt to push
for more negotiation. This happened during
negotiations and has continued at the General
Conference. Actions at UNESCO were accompanied by
intense EC, French, British and Canadian lobbying in
capitals urging other members not to reopen the
convention (in effect not to support the U.S.) we
heard some voices among EU members complaining about
the process and the heavy hand of the commission, but
there never seemed to be a serious effort by members
to push back or to look at the consequences to UNESCO
and broader relations with the U.S.

11. (SBU) (comment continued) Canada has been raising
the flag of Canadian culture for years. We are not
quite sure what it is in Anglophone Canada, but Ottawa
seems to feel it must be protected there as well as in
Quebec. Canadian media accounts have expressed
disappointment that the convention is ambiguous about
its relationship to other instruments and does not
have clear precedence over WTO disagreements.
Regardless, we have already seen press reports that
Canada intends to ratify by the end of the year.

12. (SBU) (comment continued) Brazil has also been
problematic in this process. Besides working with the
EU and Canada against the U.S., the Brazilians blocked
all attempts to include any discussion of IPR in the
convention beyond the preamble. The Brazilian
ambassador was also annoyingly aggressive in his
interventions. It probably did not take much to get
Brazil to join in the cultural diversity parade, but
the year of Brazil in France certainly must not have
hurt.

13. (SBU) (comment continued) Japan's haste to sign
onto the convention was unseemly. Japan allowed its
already weak draft resolution on the interpretation of
the convention to be further weakened by Canada. In
order not to upset the tenuous agreement they had
reached with Canada, the EU and Brazil, that
ostensibly gave them cover to vote for it, we were
treated to the spectacle of Japan voting against each
of the U.S. amendments and speaking against a U.S.
proposal to add language from the UNESCO constitution
to the amendment. We can only surmise that Japan did
this to prevent Director General Matsuura from losing
face. Time will tell if the DG ultimately loses much
more face when he is remembered as the one in charge
when this convention was drafted and adopted.

14. (SBU) (comment continued) this leads us to the
future of UNESCO. Several disquieting trends have
emerged along with the convention. First, impelled by
the EU acting as a bloc, other regional groupings came
out with united positions in support of the
convention. Few were the small countries willing to
go against their regional positions. The various
groups included the G-77, the Francophonie, the Latin
union, African group and others. Even countries such
as those in Central America, which just signed onto
CAFTA, felt compelled to support their regional group.
If this trend continues on other major issues or at
other UN venues, there is a risk of continued us
isolation.

15. (SBU) comment continued) there is also the issue
of venue shopping. We believe that when France and
other supporters of "l'exception culturelle" could not
get recognition of the concept in the WTO, they turned
to UNESCO where business is conducted with much less
rigor than in other international organizations. We
already hear disquieting talk of UNESCO taking over
the "substance" of the internet with technical issues
remaining at the ITU in Geneva and UNESCO encroachment
into WIPO and who areas of expertise.

16. (SBU) (comment continued) finally, the U.S. came
back to UNESCO to engage in the organizations
education, science and culture programs (beyond
cultural diversity). We are already starting to see
good results in those areas and have just been elected
to the world heritage committee. Unfortunately, we
may have also unwittingly lent legitimacy to the
proponents of cultural diversity a la UNESCO. Our
good-faith efforts at negotiation were not
reciprocated, but our participation gave legitimacy to
a process that would have had little value without a
U.S. presence. Clearly, the future of our engagement
with UNESCO will have to be examined carefully.

OLIVER

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