VZCZCXYZ0000
OO RUEHWEB

DE RUCNAI #0007/01 1941201
ZNY CCCCC ZZH
O 121201Z JUL 08
FM USDEL SECRETARY
TO RUEHOK/AMCONSUL OSAKA KOBE IMMEDIATE
INFO RUEHC/SECSTATE WASHDC IMMEDIATE
RUEHBJ/AMEMBASSY BEIJING IMMEDIATE
RUEHBY/AMEMBASSY CANBERRA IMMEDIATE
RUEHBUL/AMEMBASSY KABUL IMMEDIATE
RUEHNE/AMEMBASSY NEW DELHI IMMEDIATE
RUEHGO/AMEMBASSY RANGOON IMMEDIATE
RUEHUL/AMEMBASSY SEOUL IMMEDIATE
RUEHWL/AMEMBASSY WELLINGTON IMMEDIATE
RUEKJCS/JOINT STAFF WASHINGTON DC IMMEDIATE
RUEAIIA/CIA WASHINGTON DC IMMEDIATE
RUEHIN/AIT TAIPEI IMMEDIATE
RHEFDIA/DIA WASHINGTON DC IMMEDIATE
RHHMUNA/HQ USPACOM HONOLULU HI IMMEDIATE
RUEKJCS/SECDEF WASHINGTON DC IMMEDIATE
RHMFISS/USFJ IMMEDIATE
RUCNDT/USMISSION USUN NEW YORK IMMEDIATE
RUEHUNV/USMISSION UNVIE VIENNA IMMEDIATE

C O N F I D E N T I A L PARTO 000007 
 
SIPDIS 
 
E.O. 12958: DECL: 06/28/2018 
TAGS: OVIP RICE CONDOLEEZZA PREL EAID MOPS JA AU
CH, IN 
SUBJECT: (U) Secretary Rice's participation in the June 
27, 2008 Trilateral Strategic Dialogue 
 
¶1.  (U) Classified by:  Uzra Zeya, Deputy Executive 
Secretary, S/ES, Department of State, Reasons 1.4 (b) and 
(d). 
 
¶2.  (U) June 27, 2008; Kyoto, Japan. 
 
¶3.  (U) Participants: 
 
U.S. 
The Secretary 
Ambassador Schieffer 
U/S Bill Burns 
A/S Christopher R. Hill, EAP 
Lt. Gen. William Fraser 
DCOS Besanceney 
A/S Sean McCormack, PA 
CG Daniel Russel (notetaker) 
 
JAPAN 
Foreign Minister Masahiko Koumura 
Kenichiro Sasae, Deputy Foreign Minister for Political 
Affairs 
Shinichi Nishimiya, Director General, MOFA N. American 
Affairs 
Akitaka Saiki, Director General, MOFA Asian and Oceanian 
Affairs 
Kanji Yamanouchi, Director, MOFA First N. America Division 
Shimokawa, Secretary 
Iwama, Director 
 
 
AUSTRALIA 
Foreign Minister Smith 
Foreign Secretary L?Estrange 
Counselor Bloomfield 
Advisor Hoogen 
Advisor Mundy 
 
¶4.  (C) SUMMARY:  The Secretary met with the Foreign 
Ministers of Japan and Australia for the fourth 
ministerial meeting of the Trilateral Strategic Dialogue 
(TSD), immediately following the G-8 Ministerial in Kyoto, 
Japan.  They reviewed trilateral cooperation in 
Humanitarian Assistance/Disaster Relief (HA/DR), the 
Security and Defense Cooperation Forum, Counterterrorism, 
Southeast Asia, the Pacific Islands, and Intelligence. 
The United States agreed to host the next TSD Ministerial. 
The working dinner addressed India, China, proliferation, 
and Burma.  Japan, as host, released a Ministerial 
statement with an annex on Humanitarian 
Assistance/Disaster Relief (HA/DR).  END SUMMARY. 
 
------------------- 
Ministerial Meeting 
------------------- 
 
 
¶5.  (SBU) The Secretary and the Foreign Ministers of Japan 
and Australia moved briskly through the agreed agenda 
after affirming the value of the TSD and expressing their 
commitment to the process.  While it was valuable to share 
views given the pace of change in the region, they agreed 
that the key was achieving practical and effective results 
through the TSD process.  They endorsed the plan for a 
Senior Officials Meeting (SOM) on the margins of UNGA, and 
Japan and Australia welcomed the U.S. offer to host the 
next Ministerial ? ideally before January 20, 2009. 
 
¶6.  (C) Humanitarian Assistance/Disaster Relief (HA/DR): 
The three Ministers approved a statement on HA/DR and 
agreed it should be followed up with concrete work by the 
Washington Working Group and in the field.  FM Smith 
indicated that Australia planned to host an officer-level 
meeting soon to finalize guidelines for trilateral 
cooperation. 
 
¶7.  (C) Security and Defense Cooperation Forum (SCDF): 
FM Koumura proposed holding tabletop exercises, noted the 
value of increased interoperability, and committed to 
moving forward on information sharing, exercises, and 
other concrete measures.  The Secretary said the SCDF was 
a good forum for cooperation that was building structure 
from lessons learned in the Indian Ocean Tsunami relief 
effort.  FM Smith confirmed Australia will host a 
principals meeting in early 2009. 
 
¶8.  (C) Counterterrorism (CT) Cooperation:  The Secretary 
said the United States would host a TSD CT forum in the 
fall and looked to embassies to continue to work 
trilaterally between meetings to exchange information and 
identify gaps or duplication.  All three ministers praised 
the May seminar on bioterrorism held in Malaysia as useful 
and innovative. 
 
¶9.  (C) Southeast Asia Cooperation:  While cooperation 
with ASEAN was valuable, the Secretary said, trilateral 
coordination was essential to address Southeast Asia?s 
challenges and proposed director-level discussions to 
build on cooperative efforts among our embassies.  FM 
Smith agreed and also stressed the importance of building 
good relations with Indonesia, describing it as a key to 
the region, which was facing economic, food, energy, and 
terrorism challenges. 
 
¶10.  (C) Fifth Japan-Pacific Summit:  FM Koumura raised 
the importance of keeping pressure on Fiji to hold 
elections in March.  He suggested that TSD regional 
embassy working groups could be expanded to include New 
Zealand.  FM Smith demurred "for the time being;" others 
like France also had a special interest in the Pacific. 
Expressing skepticism about Fiji?s election timeline, he 
recommended the three countries push for a firm commitment 
at the August Pacific Island Forum leaders meeting in 
 
 
Niue.  The Secretary agreed and commended Australia?s 
leadership in the Pacific.  She also asked Australia and 
Japan to use the TSD working group to explore economic 
opportunities for Pacific development resulting from U.S. 
military realignment to Guam. 
 
¶11.  (C) Intelligence Cooperation:  FM Smith proposed that 
the three intelligence services share thinking on the 
strategic implications of emerging global problems such as 
resource shortages, climate change, and pandemics. 
Secondly, he flagged the importance of working together to 
identify and fix deficiencies in information handling and 
security.  Secretary Rice endorsed the suggestions.  FM 
Koumura acknowledged that intelligence reform "needs to be 
done properly" to permit the sharing of information. 
 
----- 
INDIA 
----- 
 
¶12.  (C) FM Smith began the working dinner discussion by 
flagging India?s emergence as an important issue for the 
TSD.  Secretary Rice described India as struggling to come 
to terms with itself as a global power and to leave behind 
its self-image as a champion of the obsolete Non-Aligned 
Movement.  She contrasted India's uncooperative behavior 
in the Doha round with the impressive role Delhi played in 
Tsunami relief, its approach on climate change, and its 
leadership as a donor to the UN?s Democracy Fund.  She 
urged that the TSD find specific areas of cooperation to 
engage India and speed its transition to a global role. 
Surely, India could be involved in TSD HA/DR activities 
and discussions, even if we did not formalize a "quad," 
the Secretary observed. 
 
¶13.  (C) The other two ministers expressed strong support 
for such involvement as a way to encourage India's global 
engagement particularly, as FM Koumura noted, given 
India's huge potential and its appetite for resources. 
Japanese yen loans and development aid to India was 
modest, but it was helping to stimulate private investment 
there.  In response to FM Smith's reference to India's 
post-colonial bureaucracy, Secretary Rice pointed out that 
as a functioning democracy, India could be particularly 
effective as a model and mentor in the developing world. 
Imagine the contribution a bureaucracy like India's could 
make to civil society and rule of law in Afghanistan, for 
example.  The Secretary also briefed on U.S.-India 
relations, making clear that the civil nuclear deal was 
only a single issue in a broad and active relationship. 
 
----- 
CHINA 
----- 
 
¶14.  (C) FM Smith called good relations with both emerging 
 
 
powers India and China a "plus sum game" that benefitted 
everyone.  That said, Australia had no illusions about 
China, and Prime Minister Rudd had been forthright with 
Beijing on its human rights breaches in Tibet.  The 
Secretary said the United States had just resumed its 
human rights dialogue with China and was working to move 
beyond individual prisoner cases to structural reform, 
such as laws that criminalize free speech and require U.S. 
internet companies to monitor and report bloggers. 
Another issue was making China act responsibly in economic 
terms:  its economy was far too large to hide behind the 
?developing country? label to rationalize threatening or 
unacceptable practices.  The Secretary concluded that 
China needed to act responsibly in accordance with its 
power abroad as well as at home; its willingness to fund 
palaces for Sudan?s leadership, for example, contradicted 
the international push for good governance. 
 
¶15.  (C) A third concern, which the Secretary said should 
be discussed trilaterally but also taken up with Beijing 
individually, was Chinese militarization.  China?s 
military build-up exceeded its national security needs, 
lacked transparency, and was marked by troubling events 
like the recent anti-satellite test.  FM Koumura strongly 
agreed that each of the three governments should press the 
Chinese for transparency regarding its military build-up. 
 
------------- 
Proliferation 
------------- 
 
¶16.  (C)  FM Koumura criticized China?s unwillingness to 
make progress on nuclear disarmament and expressed concern 
about China?s and India?s nuclear arsenals, asking if the 
the United States and Australia were similarly worried. 
The Secretary said we were concerned because China and 
India, as well as Pakistan, were operating in an 
?unconstrained atmosphere? without a security architecture 
that could reduce risk.  In contrast, the United States 
and the Soviet Union had in place a large measure of 
predictability through dialogue, transparency, and CBMs 
during the Cold War.  FM Smith asked if there was more we 
could do collectively and raised the Australian proposal 
for an International Nuclear Nonproliferation and 
Disarmament Commission, which he asked Japan to consider 
joining.  The U.S.-Soviet experience showed the value of 
regulatory arrangements to reduce risk.  Moreover, we face 
the more grave threat of a non-state actor acquiring a 
nuclear weapon.  FM Koumura interjected that a nuclear- 
armed North Korea - a state that kidnapped Japanese 
citizens - posed as much a threat as a terrorist group. 
The Secretary replied, "That?s exactly why we are trying 
to disarm them." 
 
¶17.  (C) Secretary Rice told FM Smith that the Australian- 
 
 
proposed Commission was a welcome development.  There was 
a real threat from terrorist organizations and rogue 
nations.  She said she hoped the Commission would address 
the need for a regulatory regime since Asia, unlike the 
U.S.-Soviet model that evolved over 30 years, had no 
security institution to manage threats and prevent 
accidental release.  That was one reason we were looking 
to see if a mechanism could emerge from the Six-Party 
Talks.  A third urgent issue, the Secretary said, was the 
fuel cycle problem:  namely, the loophole in the NPT that 
entitled countries to enrich and reprocess.  Since we 
could not verify in a closed society if the application 
was genuinely for civil power, that loophole needed to be 
closed. 
 
---- 
IRAN 
---- 
 
¶18.  (C) This dual use loophole was why we had an Iran 
problem, the Secretary stated.  It was essential that we 
cooperate to prevent Tehran from joining the group of 
dangerous states with nuclear weapons.  Libya had been a 
terrorist state that was persuaded to voluntarily 
relinquish its WMD program.  North Korea, after a 30-year 
quest for nuclear weapons, was now beginning to destroy 
its nuclear facilities.  Syria's nuclear reactor, however, 
was taken out of commission in a different manner.  Tehran 
needed to be persuaded to comply.  FM Smith agreed that we 
faced a significant threat and called Iran the "test case" 
on nuclear proliferation.  The prospect of any state 
acting unilaterally to "deal" with the Iranian nuclear 
problem was worrying.  The challenge was to use pressure, 
including UN sanctions, to bring Iran into compliance with 
international norms. 
 
----- 
BURMA 
----- 
 
¶19.  (C) Turning to Burma, the Secretary predicted that 
the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF) would in effect be the 
"Burma Meeting."  For the Junta to let untold numbers die 
while clearly non-political relief sat offshore was so 
awful that the ARF could not appear to accept it.  FM 
Smith pronounced himself "in screaming agreement." 
Australia had made explicit that while its humanitarian 
aid had no politics attached, the Junta still blocked it. 
ASEAN and the UN Secretary-General were able to make only 
minor inroads.  FM Koumura said he fully agreed with 
taking up the issue at ARF and said we should bring sticks 
as well as offer carrots if there was some movement. 
Burma's leaders, like North Korea's, had proven themselves 
devoid of any concern for their people. 
RICE