Cablegate: Poland: Vice President Biden's Roundtable With

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RUEHZL/EUROPEAN POLITICAL COLLECTIVE

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E.O. 12958: N/A
TAGS: PREL PHUM KDEM PL
SUBJECT: POLAND: VICE PRESIDENT BIDEN'S ROUNDTABLE WITH
CIVIL SOCIETY ACTIVISTS

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1. (SBU) SUMMARY: In an October 21 meeting with the Vice
President, a diverse group of Polish civil society
representatives, including organizations active in promoting
democratic transformation and empowerment of women and
minorities, emphasized Poland's efforts to share its
successful transformation experience with countries in
Eastern Europe and the Caucasus. Participants highlighted
Poland's unique strengths and the challenges they still face.
Noting that Poland had benefited from SEED and USAID
assistance in the 1990s, participants said Poland would
welcome U.S. technical assistance and expertise to strengthen
Poland's capacity to deliver development assistance to third
countries. They expressed confidence that a U.S.-Polish
partnership -- bringing together Poland's know-how and
experience with U.S. resources and development expertise --
would bolster efforts to strengthen democratic institutions
and processes eastward. The Vice President congratulated
Poland for all it had achieved and encouraged Poles to
continue to shift from thinking of what the U.S. can do for
Poland to what the U.S. can do with Poland. He told civil
society leaders that Poland is a leading example of how to
transition successfully to democracy, and Poles should be
confident in looking to themselves for guidance. END SUMMARY.

2. (U) PARTICIPANTS

United States
-------------
Vice President Biden
Ambassador Feinstein, U.S. Ambassador to Poland

Polish Civil Society
--------------------
Jolanta Kwasniewska, Former First Lady of Poland and Founder,
Communication without Barriers Foundation
Bronislaw Misztal, Executive Director, Community of
Democracies Permanent Secretariat
Eleonora Bergman, Director, Jewish Historical Institute
Jacek Michalowski, Program Director, Polish-American Freedom
Foundation
Dorota Mitrus, President, European Institute for Democracy
Mirella Panek-Owsianska, President, Responsible Business Forum
Paula Sawicka, President, Open Republic Association
Jacek Strzemieczny, President, Center for Citizenship
Education

3. (SBU) The Vice President began the meeting by saying he
had asked to meet with Civil Society Organizations because
they have their fingers on the pulse of society. He noted
the importance he had personally placed on Poland as a U.S.
Senator, particularly his leadership in the Senate on Polish
membership in NATO. Biden said he had found it hard to
believe that the U.S. commitment to Poland had been
questioned in connection with U.S. efforts to reset relations
with Russia. He noted that the world was at an inflection
point and had changed utterly over the past ten years. The
world will change with or without our input. We have a
chance to bend the curve of history, Biden said, noting that
Civil Society Organizations should be at the forefront of
such efforts. A Europe "whole and free" is one of the two
foundations of building a global security apparatus for the
21st century, and Central European countries are poised to
play a leading role. He asked the participants to provide a
sense of how Central Europe was developing and responding to
changes over the past decade. The long-term success of
Central Europe's democratic transition will depend on the
spread of democracy eastward and ensuring that it takes root
at home.

4. (SBU) Bronislaw Misztal of the Community of Democracies
Permanent Secretariat said the Vice President had "come to
the right place" to discuss promoting democratic change in
Eastern Europe. He pointed out that Polish Civil Society
Organizations are actively engaged in sharing Poland's
experience and know-how with Eastern neighbors. Misztal
agreed that the world had changed in the past decade. With a
new architecture for international relations, the role of the
United States would also change. He expressed appreciation
for the Obama Administration's shift in focus on democracy
promotion, and noted that, even though the "delivery service"
had changed, Poland still had the requisite "parcel contents"
to share with activists aspiring to democratic change in
other countries. Misztal said next year's tenth anniversary
of the Community of Democracies presented an opportunity to
rethink -- and re-energize -- democracy promotion under the
current challenging conditions. He reiterated that Poland

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has the experience and is looking for U.S. partnership and
cooperation toward shared goals.

5. (SBU) The Polish-American Freedom Foundation's Jacek
Michalowski noted that Poland had created a successful
democracy and now feels a "moral obligation" to share its
experience eastward. He stressed the need for greater
coordination between the approximately 1,500 smaller Polish
Civil Society Organizations working in Eastern Europe.
Michalowski called for greater emphasis on three-country
youth exchange programs, e.g., Poland-U.S.-Russia or
Poland-U.S.-Belarus. Although NGOs run a number of small
programs, exchanges on a much larger scale are urgently
needed. Picking up on this theme, the Vice President agreed
that more people -- especially young people -- need to be
exposed to democratic systems to increase the chances that
they become adherents.

6. (SBU) The Vice President asked how Polish Civil Society
Organizations interface with counterparts in countries like
Ukraine. While Polish organizations face stiff competition
for grants and therefore work hard to identify effective
partners, this is not always easy, Michalowski said. Biden
noted that during his recent visit to Ukraine, which faces
the dual challenges of Russian pressure and internal
disarray, government officials had cited a lack of
interlocutors from other countries as a complicating factor.
The European Institute for Democracy's Mitrus questioned such
claims, citing as one example her organization's efforts to
arrange internships and exchange programs for Ukrainian
government officials. As another example, she cited her
NGO's project (funded by the UK) to enhance cross-border
security cooperation between Polish and Ukrainian border
guards, police, and customs.

7. (SBU) Mitrus said Polish Civil Society Organizations have
an advantage promoting democracy in former Soviet states
because "Poles have been there, too." As such, countries to
the East more readily identify with Poland. However, Polish
NGOs have difficulty finding quality partners in neighboring
countries -- they are there, but difficult to identify. She
also stressed the need to move "beyond conferences" to
practical action. She suggested experts from USAID could
help the GOP and Polish NGOs address weaknesses in Poland's
development assistance legislation and delivery mechanisms.
U.S. expertise on how to build development assistance
projects would be especially helpful, Mitrus said. The Vice
President encouraged Mitrus and others to think beyond what
the U.S. could provide to Poland and explore what the U.S.
and Poland could do together as partners. (COMMENT:
Participants afterwards told Embassy officers this was the
first time a high-level Western official had effectively
identified Poland as part of "the West," rather than Central
or Eastern Europe -- a welcome development from their
perspective. END COMMENT.)

8. (SBU) Eleonora Bergman of the Jewish Historical Institute
(JHI) said that her Institute's work, while specialized,
plays an important role in strengthening Polish democracy.
By teaching about the history of Polish Jews and preserving
Jewish memory -- not just for Poles but also for exchange
students and teachers from the United States and Eastern
European countries -- JHI is engaged in showing that
democracy promotion is about opening up participation to
voices that have traditionally been under-represented and
even excluded. Noting his visit earlier in the day to the
Warsaw Ghetto Uprising memorial, Biden said he had been
especially impressed by the efforts of non-Jewish Civil
Society Organizations to promote Poland's Jewish heritage.
"The fact that Jewish and non-Jewish organizations are
sitting together in this meeting is a sign of how far Poland
has come," Biden said.

9. (SBU) Picking up on the notion that democracy is about
more than free elections, Jacek Strzemieczny of the Center
for Citizenship Education (CCE) stressed the importance of
promoting active citizenship. "We have to change attitudes,"
he said. CCE had moved beyond its early 1990s focus on
civics classes to look at the broader educational experience.
The key objective is empowering young people to take on the
big challenges their societies face and to help students
understand that people from different historical backgrounds
can work together to solve problems. Biden agreed that
education plays an essential role, suggesting that the key
difference between the former Soviet Union and Western
democracies during the Cold War was the emphasis the latter

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had placed on teaching critical thinking. He said the Obama
Administration's "back to basics" approach worldwide is to
focus on the transformative power of basic education. Biden
agreed that elections are a necessary, but not sufficient,
precondition for democracy. A free press, educated populace,
democratic structures, and capacity to deliver basic services
are also essential.

10. (SBU) Open Republic's Paula Sawicka commented that
perhaps Strzemieczny and others had an easier task educating
children in the value of tolerance, whereas her organization
was faced with the more difficult prospect of working to
develop these values in adults. She pledged her readiness to
bring her wealth of experiences to the process. Biden noted
that the most critical condition that Poland, Hungary, and
the Czech Republic had to meet for NATO accession in the
1990s was to overcome concerns, on the basis of the
experience of the past 70 years, about the treatment of
minority groups. NATO is more than a security arrangement,
Biden said. It is an organization based on shared values.
While all Allies, the U.S. included, have work to do with
respect to treatment and participation of minority groups,
every post-Cold War aspirant country, including Poland, had
to demonstrate its commitment to resolving difficult
historical issues, whether border disputes or human rights
concerns.

11. (SBU) Mirella Panek-Owsianska, a former spokesperson for
Amnesty International Poland, told the Vice President she had
solicited questions on Facebook for this meeting. She spoke
of a great hope among her Polish peers for the U.S. to act as
a true leader in the promotion of human rights.
Panek-Owsianska said that Poles stand ready to be partners in
this. The Vice President noted that these changes can be hard
to achieve. In closing, former First Lady Jolanta
Kwasniewska reflected that Poland and the whole world had
been inspired by President Obama's message of 'hope.' She
reiterated that the experience of the past 20 years had
equipped Poland to share what it had learned with the rest of
the world. The most important way to move forward was to
"just do it."

12. (U) Vice President Biden's Office has cleared this cable.
HEIDT

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