VZCZCXRO8331
OO RUEHAG RUEHBC RUEHDE RUEHKUK RUEHROV
DE RUEHDM #5302 3181405
ZNY CCCCC ZZH
O 141405Z NOV 06
FM AMEMBASSY DAMASCUS
TO RUEHC/SECSTATE WASHDC IMMEDIATE 2450
INFO RUEHEE/ARAB LEAGUE COLLECTIVE
RUCNMEM/EU MEMBER STATES COLLECTIVE
RUEHTV/AMEMBASSY TEL AVIV 1384
RUEATRS/DEPT OF TREASURY WASHDC
RUCPDOC/DEPT OF COMMERCE WASHDC

C O N F I D E N T I A L DAMASCUS 005302 
 
SIPDIS 
 
SIPDIS 
 
NEA/RA FOR NEA/ELA, EB, L, COMMERCE/BIS/OAC, USTR 
 
E.O. 12958: DECL: 11/08/2016 
TAGS: ABLD ECON KBCT PHUM SY
SUBJECT: ARAB LEAGUE BOYCOTT MEETING - READOUT 
 
Classified By: CDA Michael Corbin for reasons 1.4 b/d 
 
 Ref: Damascus 2341 
 
¶1. (U) Summary.  The semi-annual meeting of the Arab League 
Boycott Office (ALBO) was held November 6-9 in Damascus, with 
representation from the same 14 countries that attended the 
last meeting in May 2006 (ref A).  Some participants feel the 
semi-annual conference has outlived its usefulness and will 
fade away if progress is made on the peace process.  A 
minority view continues to insist the meeting is necessary if 
only for the political statement it makes.  Reports after the 
fact showed it to be lackluster and nothing new came out of 
it.  End Summary. 
 
¶2. (C) Information from contacts confirms that the following 
countries were represented at the semi-annual three day 
meeting of the Arab League Boycott committee: Algeria, Iraq, 
Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, Morocco, the Palestine Authority, 
Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Syria, Tunisia, UAE and Yemen. 
Information from contacts confirms these attendees.  Most 
states were represented at the working level by their local 
embassies; our contact at the Kuwait embassy, however, 
confirmed that his government sent two working-level Customs 
officials, and went on to report that UAE sent a 
working-level delegation from Abu Dhabi, which conflicted 
with the information we were getting from the UAE embassy 
prior to the meeting. 
 
¶3.  (C) EconOff met with local representatives of several 
Arab League member countries before and after the ALBO 
meetings.  Contacts said before the meeting that they 
expected turnout to be moderate and actual implementation of 
any decisions to be low.  Based on readouts, the conference 
was as lackluster as anticipated.  Discussions ran along the 
&usual8 lines, with the loudest calls to action from Syria, 
the Palestinian Authority and Libya; the loudest objections 
from Saudi Arabia; and the loudest silence from North Africa. 
 
 
¶4.  (C) The camp of participants who feel that the ALBO has 
outlived its usefulness includes Tunisia, whose resident 
econoff commented to us on the eve of the conference that the 
Arab boycott is especially irrelevant in the modern global 
economy.  He offered the example of Nestle, which does 
business with Israel but also has a plant in Syria; 
boycotting Nestle would therefore cost Syrian jobs, and how 
does that help?  The ALBO is & ( a waste of my time and ( 
I wrote this to Tunis,8 he said.  Nasser al Qahtani of the 
Kuwait Embassy noted that attendance at ALBO meetings 
historically can be strongly influenced by political events; 
if the Israeli-Hizbollah conflict were more recent, he said, 
attendance would be higher and more vocal.  Concerns about 
future attendance reportedly prompted the local ALBO chief to 
tell this year,s participants that he views Djibouti and 
Somalia,s future involvement to be important to the 
meeting,s continued viability. 
 
¶5.  (C) Comment.  Contacts at Arab embassies felt the ALBO 
was an organization in the sunset of its life, especially 
given the global nature of business today.  Uniformly, their 
countries attend the meetings but do not implement the 
secondary and tertiary elements of the boycott.  In the end, 
the ALBO remains relegated to being a forum that allows a few 
die-hard countries to let off steam, yet permitting some Arab 
confreres to maintain business ties with Israel without 
losing face. 
CORBIN