VZCZCXYZ0004
RR RUEHWEB

DE RUEHBK #1425/01 1300933
ZNR UUUUU ZZH
R 090933Z MAY 08
FM AMEMBASSY BANGKOK
TO RUEHC/SECSTATE WASHDC 2980
INFO RUCNDT/USMISSION USUN NEW YORK 5327
RUEHGV/USMISSION GENEVA 2026

UNCLAS BANGKOK 001425 
 
SIPDIS 
SENSITIVE 
 
E.O. 12958: N/A 
TAGS: EAID ENRG UN IR CH IN KS JA PK RS AS XB
 
SUBJECT: U.S. Wins Concessions on UNESCAP 64th Commission Session 
Resolutions 
 
¶1. (SBU) Summary.  The United Nations Economic and Social Commission 
for Asia and the Pacific (UNESCAP) held its 64th annual commission 
session in Bangkok April 22-30.  This year's theme was "Energy 
Security and Sustainable Development in Asia and the Pacific." 
After several days (and nights) of negotiations, nine resolutions 
were passed by consensus, calling for the Commission to take action 
on topics from road transport to renewable energy technology.  A 
resolution was also passed on reform of the conference structure 
that shortens the conference from nine days to seven and takes other 
steps to streamline operations.  Iran withdrew from consideration 
this year its resolution that proposed establishing a disaster 
management center in Tehran.  On virtually all key points, the U.S. 
worked with Japan, South Korea, and Australia to win needed 
concessions.  End Summary 
 
¶2. (SBU) Membership in UNESCAP comprises 53 countries of the vast 
Asia Pacific region from Azerbaijan to Australia, plus four 
extra-regional members (the United States, the United Kingdom, 
France, and the Netherlands).  In practice, very active 
participation in the proceedings, and especially negotiations over 
the resolutions, has been limited to a handful of countries.  Over 
the past year at the monthly meetings of the Advisory Committee of 
Permanent Representatives (ACPR), and then subsequently at the 
annual Commission session held in Bangkok April 22-30, the most 
active countries have been Russia, China, Japan, Korea, India, 
Pakistan, and Iran and the U.S.  Australia has also become more 
vocal recently. 
 
¶3. (SBU) Negotiations over the text of the resolutions at the 
commission session were almost exclusively confined to the nine 
countries mentioned above, with predictable fault lines.  Japan, 
Korea, and Australia tended to adhere to positions similar to those 
of the United States, especially on resolutions concerning financing 
the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and technology transfer.  On 
these same issues, India and Pakistan led the developing country 
bloc.  Russia and China were somewhere in between, with Russia 
leaning more toward the wealthy countries' position and China 
leaning more toward the developing countries' position on most 
issues. 
 
¶4. (SBU) The Commission passed a resolution on Reform of the 
Conference Structure.  Notably, the resolution reduced the number of 
days of future commission sessions from nine to seven.  This was a 
compromise solution reached after Korea, the United States, Japan, 
and Australia expressed support for reducing the commission session 
to five days, and Russia and Iran supported retaining it at nine 
days.  The UNESCAP Secretariat claimed that reducing the commission 
session to less than seven days would have budgetary implications 
due to work requirements of translators.  The Secretariat also 
undoubtedly preferred the more stretched-out schedule to give more 
time for document translation and preparation between meetings.  The 
countries that supported reducing the number of days of the session 
to five pointed out that it would reduce the burden on traveling 
delegations and overall would have to cost less than a nine day 
session.  The resolution imposed a limit on the number of ACPR 
meetings to 12 per year to avoid increasing the budget.  The 
resolution also re-named the eight committees of the commission and 
determined that these committees would meet biennially, with four 
committees meeting per year. 
 
¶5. (SBU) India sponsored a resolution on Energy Security and 
Sustainable Development that was in effect a resolution on 
technology transfer.  India, strongly backed by Pakistan, proposed 
treating renewable energy technology as a "non-commercial good" and 
to place such technology "in the public domain."  The United States 
and Japan could not accept such language and in the end prevailed in 
getting it removed.  The negotiations over this resolution involved 
mainly the United States and Japan on one side of the table, and 
India and Pakistan on the other side, with Russia and China 
observing on the margins. 
 
¶6. (SBU) Iran was only concerned and engaged on two resolutions. 
One was about Iran's ongoing proposal to host in Tehran an Asian and 
Pacific Center for Information, Communication and Space 
Technology-enabled Disaster Management (APIDM).  Despite an 
agreement at last year's conference to allow for an independent 
consultant study of the proposal, Iran submitted a resolution that 
incorporated none of the study's recommendations.  In the end, the 
Iranian delegation said they did not have time to produce a new 
resolution that incorporated the consultant's recommendations that 
were made at the ACPR meeting in January, so the resolution was 
withdrawn for the time being, but is likely to resurface next year. 
The other resolution that concerned Iran was a resolution on reform 
of the conference structure.  Iran appeared to feel isolated in 
Southwest Asia from the rest of the UNESCAP region and through 
numerous interventions attempted to use the conference structure 
resolution as a means to emphasize "sub-regional" programming and to 
constantly evaluate UNESCAP to see that its wishes are implemented. 
 
 
¶7. (SBU) The Philippines-sponsored resolution on financing the 
Millennium Development Goals initially had language in the operative 
paragraphs calling for debt swaps for middle income countries and 
for the establishment of a regional official development facility. 
This language was removed after opposition from Japan, the United 
States, and Australia.  Although the Philippines sponsored the 
resolution, it was almost silent in the negotiations.  Pakistan took 
over to argue for the original language, though it conceded in the 
end to our position to reach consensus. 
 
¶8. (U) The full texts of the resolutions and conference reports are 
available on the ESCAP website at http://www.unescap.org/64. 
 
 
John