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Lucia A Keegan  10/11/2006 09:51:38 AM  From  DB/Inbox:  Lucia A Keegan

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UNCLAS    SENSITIVE     PARIS 06615

SIPDIS
cxparis:
    ACTION: UNESCO
    INFO:   AMBU AMB AMBO DCM SCI POL ECON

DISSEMINATION: UNESCOX
CHARGE: PROG

APPROVED: AMB:LOLIVER
DRAFTED: DCM: AKOSS
CLEARED: PAO:CBERGIN

VZCZCFRI389
RR RUEHC RUCNSCO
DE RUEHFR #6615/01 2771505
ZNR UUUUU ZZH
R 041505Z OCT 06
FM AMEMBASSY PARIS
TO RUEHC/SECSTATE WASHDC 1965
INFO RUCNSCO/UNESCO COLLECTIVE

UNCLAS SECTION 01 OF 02 PARIS 006615 
 
SIPDIS 
 
FROM AMBASSADOR OLIVER TO A/S POWELL 
 
SENSITIVE 
 
E.O. 12958: N/A 
TAGS: UNESCO KPAO
SUBJECT:  USUNESCO - A/S POWELL VISIT:  PD SCENESETTER 
 
 
¶1.  (U) SUMMARY:  I am looking forward to your October 23 and 24 
visit to UNESCO, and would like to suggest that UNESCO with its 
education, communication and culture mandates is the ideal platform 
to advance the Secretary's transformational diplomacy agenda.  In 
this regard, I would like you to consider raising a number of 
potential Public Diplomacy initiatives during your meeting with the 
UNESCO Director-General, Koichiro Matsuura on October 24.  I would 
also welcome press guidance on education issues in order to 
effectively engage with the press during and on the margins of the 
Fulbright New Century Scholars Plenary Session.  The multiplier 
effect for PD at UNESCO is huge given the fact that 192 member 
states belong to UNESCO.  Many of their Ambassadors come from 
Education or Cultural ministries, which provides a unique 
opportunity for outreach to an elite that is often skeptical of the 
United States.  Moreover, ECA's programs directly link to the 
Mission's top priority of education reform, as well as democracy 
building and our active leadership as a member of the UNESCO World 
Heritage Committee.  END SUMMARY. 
 
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UNESCO'S MIDDLE NAMES ARE EDUCATION AND CULTURE: 
--------------------------------------------- ---- 
 
¶2.  (U) I propose 4 ways in which ECA could consider bridging with 
UNESCO through educational exchanges and cultural promotion:  the 
Fulbright Senior Specialists Program to increase U.S. influence in 
the organization's thinking and approach to programs and budget, the 
Fulbright Teacher Exchange to provide teacher training in countries 
where UNESCO has a strong record on educational reform, the 
Ambassador's Fund for Cultural Preservation to annually fund a 
project chosen jointly by the U.S. Mission and UNESCO's World 
Heritage Center, and ECA Cultural Programming in the visual arts to 
promote American achievement in film during the 2007 General 
Conference, when over 190 Education and Cultural Ministers as well 
as Heads of State from around the world converge at UNESCO.  These 
ideas go beyond publicizing these programs at UNESCO, which we 
already do. 
 
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FULBRIGHT PROGRAMS: 
------------------- 
 
¶3.  (U) I am currently negotiating with UNESCO to bring on board 
5-10 Fulbright Senior Specialist Fellows, starting in May 2007 for 
periods of up to 6 weeks.  UNESCO sectors have responded keenly to 
the possibility, with requests for experts in media law, curriculum 
assessment, program evaluation, bioethics law, oceanographic issues, 
and statistics evaluation.  All of these fields link directly to our 
priorities and support Department Transformational Diplomacy goals, 
whether it is correctly measuring the impact of literacy programs 
through teaching people in developing countries how to interpret 
statistics, or helping to build a database of media law for 
post-conflict countries to draw on when they draft legislation on 
freedom of expression.  Ideally, we would like to complete an 
agreement with UNESCO before mid-October so that A/S Powell may 
announce this initiative to the DG.  UNESCO, as host institution, 
can offer workspace and subsidized lunches.  UNESCO Management is 
looking into whether it can support housing costs for Fulbright 
Senior Specialists in the field or at Paris Headquarters, though I 
believe this support may be extremely limited due to UNESCO's 
zero-no-growth budget.  I ask that your office consider identifying 
resources to cover housing expenses here in Paris and in the field 
in order to place fellows from this valuable program at UNESCO. 
 
¶4. (U) Introducing the Fulbright Teacher Exchange Program to UNESCO 
in order to promote teacher training would demonstrate in practical 
terms U.S. leadership on education reform, complement the First 
Lady's role as UNESCO Honorary Ambassador for the United Nations 
Decade of Literacy and capitalize on the enormous public success of 
the First Lady's September 18 White House Conference on Global 
Literacy.  This exchange could occur in countries that have made 
progress on education reform, in the pilot program countries of 
UNESCO's Literacy for Life initiative, or in the 5 countries which 
will host follow-on conferences to the First Lady's September 18 
Literacy Conference.  The experiences of these teachers could be 
shared with UNESCO field offices.  They could also yield best 
practices to be shared publicly at the five planned UNESCO follow-on 
literacy conferences, which would underscore the power that 
people-to-people exchanges have in promoting literacy in the 
developing world.  In the cases in which this important Fulbright 
program already exists in chosen countries, this Teacher Exchange 
Program could build upon or supplement existing programs; perhaps it 
could be identified as a specific U.S.-UNESCO program. 
 
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CULTURAL INITIATIVES: 
--------------------- 
 
¶5.  (U) The Ambassador's Fund for Cultural Preservation is another 
field with great potential for cooperation at UNESCO.  For the past 
two years, I have sent the program's annual report and a letter to 
all of my colleagues notifying them of it and encouraging them to 
apply through the U.S. Embassy in their home country. Responses have 
been very positive.  For example, South Africa, Chile, Equatorial 
Guinea, Paraguay have all expressed appreciation for the 
information, been delighted to learn of projects in their home 
countries (the South African Ambassador praised the U.S. for its 
cooperation with African countries to preserve Africa's cultural 
richness as a whole) and noted the program's potential for capacity 
building, training and site management.  I ask you to consider 
building on the existing program by allowing the Mission to choose 
one endangered World Heritage site per year in conjunction with the 
UNESCO World Heritage Center for Ambassador's Fund support.  Results 
of the annual project could be shared with the World Heritage 
Committee to encourage best practices for site management. 
 
¶6.  (U) From October 15 to November 1, 2007, UNESCO will host its 
biannual General Conference, and welcome Education and Cultural 
Ministers as well as Heads of State from around the world.  This is 
an ideal opportunity to, in keeping with the First Lady's Global 
Cultural Initiative, showcase American Film.  UNESCO Ambassadors are 
a jaded lot - with 190 peers deploying their full cultural arsenal 
month after month, it can be hard to keep their attention.  However, 
a classic American Film presented in UNESCO's Conference Hall by a 
leading celebrity at UNESCO would be a showstopper - and would 
attract celebrity UNESCO Ambassadors such as Sidney Poitier 
(Bahamas) and Charles Aznavour (Armenia), in town for the General 
Conference, and potentially Goodwill Ambassadors such as Claudia 
Cardinale (Italy) and Catherine Deneuve (France).  In May, I 
presented remarks on cooperation in popular culture at the 
President's Committee on the Arts and Humanities Symposium on Film, 
Television, Digital Media and Popular Culture in Los Angeles, and 
met there with American Film Institute (AFI) leaders, who indicated 
an interest in cooperation with Mission on programs. 
 
¶7. (U) These program suggestions would help the U.S. further improve 
its standing within the UNESCO diplomatic community and increase our 
influence and leadership at UNESCO.  Our efforts to do so are of 
particular importance as we are the Vice Chair of UNESCO's policy 
setting Executive Board, where we are preparing for the 2007 General 
Conference which will set the UNESCO Agenda from 2008 to 2013 in its 
medium term strategy - a document we are negotiating now.  We are 
also continuing to have problems with certain individuals at UNESCO 
who try to promote anti-Americanism and ignorance over American 
goals and priorities in key UNESCO sectors. 
 
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PRESS AT THE NCS PLENARY: 
------------------------- 
 
¶8.  (U) As we approach the Fulbright New Century Scholars (NCS) 
Plenary on October 24, I have noticed an up tick in press play and 
in policy moves among some UNESCO staff on the issue of education as 
a public good.  For example, there were recent reports in the media 
that Belgian officials, at the September 28 annual meeting of French 
speaking countries worldwide (the Francophonie), called for a UNESCO 
instrument modeled on the 2005 cultural diversity convention to 
ensure education is exempt from established international trade 
laws.  Since the NCS Plenary discusses private-public partnerships 
and equitable access to education, Mission would encourage ECA to 
reach out to scholars who support private education, and ask them to 
consider doing some press pull asides to explain their views. 
Mission would also ask ECA to coordinate with IO/PPC, IO/UNESCO, 
USTR and the Department of Education to proactively draft press 
guidance addressing this issue and the related issue of non-binding 
cross border education guidelines that were jointly negotiated by 
UNESCO and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development 
(OECD). 
 
¶9.  (U)  I am so pleased that you have chosen to hold the NCS 
plenary at UNESCO headquarters, the only UN agency with a mandate 
for education, and am very appreciative of your willingness to meet 
UNESCO Ambassadors and the Director-General on the margins of the 
NCS conference.  I hope that you may be able to explore with the 
Director-General the synergies outlined above between ECA programs 
and UNESCO's mandate.  I also hope that by proactively showing the 
richness of views and scholars to the press at the NCS plenary, we 
can open more minds at UNESCO, including those of many Francophones 
and representatives of the developing world, to the merits of 
protecting the diversity of education systems and providers 
worldwide. 
 
Oliver