It is as always an honour and a pleasure to be here with many good
friends and discussing a very important topic. I actually have the
easiest job here tonight because I’ve been asked simply to answer the
question: “Can conflict transformation tools avert a military
intervention in Iran?” So the answer from my perspective, with twelve
years engagement working in about 90 plus countries around the world
and over 20 war zones would be a very simple yes. I could end there but
that probably wouldn’t be satisfying for everybody.
One of the things to say straight from the beginning:
Fortunately, the
situation we are facing is not a choice between acting and not acting.
The question is how we act. This has been a challenge with the way we
have been framing issues of military interventions from Western
countries over the past 20 years, because it’s always presented by
political leaderships as a choice of intervening or doing nothing. Very
fortunately, that’s not the entire realm of options available to us.
Rather than doing a normal style of presentation, going over many of
the different issues, when I got onto the plane earlier this morning, I
just started typing down
42 different possible ideas for what could be
done. This took less than 10 minutes. It is not said to be a solution.
There are many different ideas and initiatives which, combined
together, independently or as a package, could help to provide means
and tools for dealing with the situation.
One of the biggest challenges facing us today is that many countries
in Western Europe, North America, the Middle East and elsewhere, do not
have sufficiently developed tools and mechanisms for dealing with
conflict effectively. We have very well developed war infrastructures
There are few countries in the world that have standing, professionally
trained, human resources for dealing with conflicts effectively. And
while that is one of the roles of diplomacy, the scope and the range of
diplomatic training and responsibilities is not enough to cover the
entire field.
Many of you may know about these Spanish-Turkish-UN supported Dialogue
of Civilisations. In response to the Madrid bombing, Spain did not go
to war against other countries. They developed what is a very
interesting, different approach: an international police support
operation to apprehend and arrest those people that were involved in
the Madrid attacks.
Notably they have arrested and prosecuted more people involved with the
Madrid attacks, and had more police engagements preventing further
civilian military actions against Spain than the United States has
following September 11. Because they used effective policing tools and
mechanisms.
But they also went further. They recognised that there are actual
reasons why these things are happening and that they need a wide range
of policies measures to address them. So they have developed the
UN-supported Dialogue of Civilisations, which is taking place in Spain,
and just a few weeks ago they had the second Annual Conference of
Rabbis and Imams in Spain.
1) So the first proposal is to have the Spanish-Turkish-UN-supported
Dialogue of Civilisations invite Iranian, US, UK (and together with
some other), government, academic and media actors to have a dialogue
on the current situation, and to look at the range of policy
alternatives and ways of dealing with the situation that could be
available.
2) Increase the number of trips by UK and US politicians and local
authorities to Iran and vice versa, so that people actually have first
hand knowledge and understanding of what they’re speaking about. Very
many of the people involved have never been to the areas in question,
whether its Iranian political leaders travelling to the UK and US or
vice versa, and a lot of the discussion around it is based more on
fear, scare-mongering and a wide range of populist political tactics on
all sides than on actual rational politics and reasoned engagement with
the conflict issues at hand.
3) Trips by religious leaders from the US, UK and Iran to each other, promoting dialogue not just at the state level.
4) A series of programmes bringing journalists from Iran, US, UK, and
other countries together for dialogue and trainings on peace
journalism, including dialogues amongst journalists as professional
peers looking at how the media is reporting in their countries, how
they’re framing the issue and how that’s affecting how the conflict is
being perceived.
All three countries have particular challenges with media which often
takes very populist, hardline or war-mongering approaches to framing of
issues. British journalists have been among the foremost in the world
at monitoring and analysing the built-in war reporting structure of the
majority of reporting in Britain about international affairs and
conflicts. The same could be said as well of the US and and Iraq as
well.
5) A joint BBC and Iranian TV or Aljazeera series of programmes on
peace strategies for addressing the conflict. So jointly bringing major
media actors together, where they could have for example a seven-part
series, since this is a major international issue which is of interest
to a wide number of people around the world involving the potential
development or use of nuclear weapons in an area where there are
already a number of conflicts – I think the media could see the
importance of it and if you have the right packaging, would be
interested.
Have two of the largest stations in the world to do it, where they
would have one episode for one hour with political leaders on all
sides, going back and forth between statements, perspectives incluing
not only diagnosis and analysis of what are the issues, and showing
them from all sides which is something that the British, US and Iranian
populations have not been privy to. They’ve not had the opportunity to
have proper hearing of the perspectives from all sides. But also
focusing on therapies, and inviting the political leaders to come
forward with what are their practical proposals of how to deal with the
situation. Something which takes more than the dogmatic statement of
responsibility or blame being attributed to one actor, which is very
much coming out from all sides involved at the moment.
A programme with religious leaders from all sides, one with citizens,
one with media on their coverage of the conflict, one with professional
peace workers from around the world, including from Islamic countries
and from Iran, which has many highly qualified and capable people
working in Islamic peace-building, and peace building and conflict
transformation.
And then the final two episodes: one where you bring together around a
big table cross-sector of participants from business, unions, social
actors, media, academics, religious leaders to discuss the issues at
hand. And a final “bringing together” in a final episode of peace
workers from around the world looking at what came up and what could be
practical proposals for it. The same way as if you’re discussing avian
bird flu syndrome or others, they bring together medical health
professionals and the World Health Organisation organises an
international conference not only with politicians making election
speeches or hardline dogmatic programmes, but with also medical health
professionals, civil servants and a wide range of people involved, to
look at bringing a cross-sector of responses for how to address the
issue.
6) Trips by members of the European Parliament to Iran, the US and the UK to discuss the issues and bring forward alternatives.
7) Trips by national-level political leaders to all three countries,
looking at promoting dialogue and practical solutions, in particular
looking at what are the legitimate needs of all parties. This is
something that is not heard. How is it seen by all of the actors
involved, and what are perhaps all around the legimate concerns?
8) This is quite an interesting one which would not be appreciated too
much in Washington or in London but:
Involvement of Venezuela as a
possible mediator with Iran. (laughter) The reason being that Hugo
Chavez has already made a very high-profile trip to the region and that
one of the ways of transcending polarised political dynamics is to
introduce additional actors that can bring forward the reality. We are
not speaking of the international community in Iran. Yes, there were
the number of countries that voted in the IAEA. There is also a very
large number of countries, through the G77, through many others, that
have voiced their disapproval of the policies being used at the moment.
And just as it was not an accurate or intelligent reflection to use the
words “international community” in the case of Yugoslavia or Iraq, so
is it not today. So to actually help to bring forward a diversity of
different voices that actually has the maturity to bring the relevant
politics to hand by engaging a wider number of actors in dealing with
the situation.
9) Series of combined dialogues and peace workshops with middle-level
diplomats on all sides. And the FCO I would actually commend very much
here in the UK because they’ve held a number of very quiet meetings
with middle and senior level people in the Foreign and Commonwealth
Office over the last several months, looking generally at introducing
skills and techniques for conflict transformation, and also in
particular dealing with conflicts of civilizations, and looking and
US-West-Christianity in relation to Arab-Islam-Middle East, and how to
deal with that. So increasing this but bringing together middle-level
diplomats on all sides in groups of 15, 20 or 30 to undergo combined
training in peace building and conflict transformation, and dialogues
on the core issues.
10) Preparation of large-scale, non-violent civilian war prevention.
That’s a long phrase. Basically, preparing ourselves on a massive scale
for civilian war prevention. This is something which in countries like
Britain, the United States and Iran, groups have often shown themselves
willing to take measures that are not necessarily in accordance with
international law, or sane and rational policy, and which often
contribute to the dramatic escalation of violence and war, and the
intensification of the very things that they’re meant to address. There
is a responsibility of citizens to ensure that action is not taken by
governments which threaten the escalation of war and violence, or
crimes of war or crimes against humanity. So beginning to prepare
ourselves on a large scale for civilian war prevention. There are many
lessons and examples from around the world that can be drawn upon from
that.
11) Learning the lessons from the build-up to Iraq, where every single
argument brought in criticism of the war was proved correct. Every
single argument brought for the war was proved false. And the impact of
what has happened on Iraq and the region after has probably been – as
is very common to say, and it’s common to say because there’s substance
to it – the greatest recruitment for increased international terrorism,
both by states and civilians, has dramatically increased the number of
human rights violations. The number of people being killed in Iraq
daily. This is not to take away in any way from the horrible massacres
of civilians which happened under the previous regime at very specific
and different periods, and an abominable human rights record, but it is
to recognise that Britain and the United States and other occupation
forces wihtin Iraq also have an abominable human rights record and have
contributed to the dramatic destabilisation of the region.
12) Spanish NOVA, an organisation in Barcelona, promotes this European
wide. They have managed to get cities and municipalities all across
Spain to
create what they call peace funds. So all across Spain, in
many many communities, cities and municipalities,
local authorities
give 0.7% of their budget to promoting a culture and a practice of
peace. If federal and national level governments have not shown
themselves responsible enough – and I would encourage to be, and we
should actually play on the positive aspects, because there are many
initiatives including by the British government to promote supporting
and development of peace-building capacities – also there can be a
positive role played by local authorities. And at the local county and
council level in Spain they are directly funding peace building
initiatives, both within the country and internationally. That’s
something we can all promote in our countries and European-wide.
13) Creation of a civil peace service in the UK and promotion of an
EU-wide civil peace service and EU peace-building office, including a
Commissioner for Peace Building in the European Union Commission. These
are actually very close to happening. It will take a lot of work over
the next five years. There is the first ever standing civil peace
service in Germany. It’s funded with 14 million euros every single year
by the German government. A long way to go, they don’t have that much
training on conflict transformation and peace-building but they do a
wide range of activities. And there’s a European network of civil peace
services to have this promoted and institutionalised at every level.
Imagine trying to put out fires without a fire department. Imagine
trying to have a national education system without a national education
service or teachers. There is an incredibly broad range of methods and
a wealth of experience for how to deal with conflicts effectively.
There’s been a tremendous amount of work to practically gather that
together over the last decades, and especially the last several years.
A next step is to
constructively engage with our governments, with
national and local authorities, and with a broad-based public awareness
campaign to raise the level of understanding across the spectrum of the
population, to see that these tools exist and to begin putting them
into practice and institutionalising them.
14) Nobel peace prize for Former President Mohammed Khatami. Few
countries have had two in such close succession, but I would suggest
this for the very simple fact that, year in year out, every single year
while he was president, he proposed a Dialogue of Civilizations. Every
single year he was refused by the British, American and other
governments which didn’t take up the initiatives. They didn’t
positively respond at least.
[Interruption:
The idea of the Dialogue of Civilizations was formally
supported by the United Nations in 2000 or 2001. We (the British
government) formally supported it, I was in Tehran at the time.]
It was formally supported in the UN, that’s true. There were proposals
by the government of Iran for holding it, there were responses to
those. There was direct non-support of it from Washington. The UN
definitely did support it, but European governments did not take
practical steps forward for initiating it. At least, that is the
perspective presented by Khatami on this issue. I’m sure it’s very
complex and there are many different perspectives involved. That’s a
positive thing we could build upon. Spain has taken this step. The UK
could also help contribute to that by taking those steps further.
15) Joint European Union-Arab League development of peace building
capacities and infrastructure. The European Union is looking at how to
build up its peace-building capacities. In the Arab League definitely
this could be strengthened. There are very limited mechanisms at this
point within the Arab League for peace building capacities. The African
Union has developed peace-keeping capacities which, as we can see from
Sudan and elsewhere, are severely challenged but are developing. The
European Union provided a 250 million euro grant to the African Union
to develop its peace building capacities. There has not been the same
commitment of resources to develop conflict transformation,
peace-building and war prevention capacities. That would be a next
step. Very positively, the African Union not only has a Security
Council; it’s a Security and Peace Council. Also the Organisation of
American States has identified this as one of its priority areas. So
work with different regional bodies to improve and develop their
conflict resolution mechanisms and capacities.
16) One thing which would be very simple:
Have a one hour session all
across the country here in the UK (and I’d also suggest this in the US
and Iran, because we believe in symmetry – I’ll get back to that more
later)
in schools, in offices, in classrooms, in every setting, to
invite people’s constructive ideas for how to deal with the situation.
So have as broad as possible dialogues, coming up with proposals, where
instead of going to war we take one hour of our time as citizens, as
members of parliament, as students, as journalists, to come up with
ideas for what can be done.
17) Encourage Quaker engagement in back-track quiet diplomacy. Not only
Quakers, many others as well, but Quakers actually have an extensive
experience throughout the region, and there are many reasons why a
number of Quakers actually have appropriate contacts that could be
quite positive in this case.
18) Have independent film-makers travel to Iran, the UK and US, to
create a documentary bringing forward people’s voices and people’s
ideas on what can be done for peace. And make that widely available to
be seen by people on all sides.
19) Have the current Pope build upon the incredibly impressive record
of the last Pope. (There are many not as positive aspects as well, but
some of the last Pope’s initiatives for building peace and religious
dialogue were historical and were quite impressive.)
Have the current
Pope build upon that positive experience by making a trip to Tehran for
a peace dialogue, and inviting the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali
Khamenei to the Vatican as a reciprocal visit. So to have a high-level
interreligious dialogue for peace. Openings have been taken following
the 1998 apology of the Catholic Church for the crusades, where there
were also representatives of the supreme leader in those quiet meetings
that took place in 1995 in Geneva.
20) Engagement by the Organisation of Islamic States on a series of
dialogues in the region on peaceful futures. So also looking at the
responsibility of the OIS and the Arab League on promoting dialogues on
peaceful futures in the region.
21) Creation of a zone free of nuclear weapons and weapons of mass
destruction in the Middle East. The nuclear non-proliferation treaty
does not only call for not developing nuclear weapons capacities; it
also calls for disarmament of states involved. Britain, the United
States and others are in violation of the nuclear non-proliferation
treaty and have been for many decades, and are not in any way taking
meaningful steps towards nuclear disarmament or towards reducing their
engagement and investment in weapons of mass destruction. I had the
unfortunate experience of being in London in October when the front
pages of the newspapers were saying 90 billion pounds for developing a
new generation of trident missiles. If that had been suggested in the
UK ten years ago, whoever suggested it probably would have lost their
job. It shows the climate that it is now possible for a militarised
regime to come forward with those proposals which are not appropriate
when it comes to meeting contemporary security challenges or increasing
security and dealing with state and non-state terrorist acts and the
needs to address them.
22) Establishment of a permanent conference on peace, security and
co-operation in the Middle East. A standing permanent conference of all
governments in the region including Israel, practically discussing the
many inter-related conflicts and areas and points of co-operation. This
was created as the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe at
a time when almost every foreign minister in Europe said it was
impossible during the Cold War. It was created originally out of an
interview done by a very young peace researcher with seventeen foreign
ministers across the European continent, where he asked them, what do
you feel are the main security challenges and what do you feel is
necessary. And individually they all said, we need a framework to
discuss these issues, even though it was not being said publicly. The
CSCE, which is today the OSCE, has had many challenges but it has also
at times played a vital and important role for providing a regional
framework for addressing conflicts among a wide range of countries.
23) Withdrawal of all US and occupation authorities from Iraq. Establishment of Iraq as a neutral zone.
24) Creation of an international police support mission for Iraq. So
not a military force, not an occupation force, but an accepted
international police support mission under the aegis of the Arab
League, the Organisation of Islamic States, the European Union and the
United Nations. And one of the challenges today if you’re looking at
Iraq is that a lot of people have simply accepted that there is an
ongoing occupation and have become quieted. Some people are maintaining
criticism of that occupation. What we’re missing is also practical
proposals for how to deal with the situation. To remove British, US,
Romanian and other occupation authorities and forces, and to actually
develop a practical engagement which offers some hope of transition in
the region.
Now, just as a quick side-note. If you’re looking from Iran’s
perspective, in the course of the last few years it’s gone from having
the Taleban in Kabul – which was at least a relatively non-threatening,
if not always friendly, regime to Tehran – to having a US-backed regime
in Kabul. There was, just a few months ago, a gathering of major Afghan
warlords opposed to the current government. I’ve worked in Afghanistan
since the mid-nineties when everybody knew who was supporting the
Taleban (and it wasn’t in their fight against the Soviet Union, because
it didn’t exist at the time, just to correct the British media
portrayal before we get up to the war). So a change of regime in the
neighbouring Afghanistan; a change of regime in the neighbouring Iraq,
from a crippled and sanction-restricted Saddam Hussein to US forces on
both borders.
Israel (which I haven’t heard anybody calling to get rid of their
nuclear weapons recently; that is, from a western parliament or
government – because there are calls around much of the rest of the
world where there is still greater consistency of policy) is in
consistent possession and has, over the existence of the NPT, developed
nuclear weapons capacity in violation of it. And that, in a sense, also
creates an arms race context. If you want to have a reduction, or a
prevention of countries with nuclear weapons, there has to be some
level of symmetry, some level of respect not laden with racism or other
reasons (religious, political or whatever) why for one it is chosen and
accepted and for another it is not.
Also India and Pakistan recently having developed nuclear weapons, at
least Britain is slightly more consistent in addressing that than
Washington, which is saying that India should be allowed to have an
acception made. It is making all of the arguments with regards to
India, that it is saying are not allowed with regards to Iraq. The
difference being that India has an overt nuclear military programme
which was developed in secret, including nuclear testing, with support
from Western governments. So there you actually have overt nuclear
development and nuclear testing and yet the policy formulation brought
by Washington towards that is very different. If there’s the perception
in any conflict – whether it’s in a family between children, in a local
community between different members, or between states – of clear bias
or application of different standards, it makes the context for
addressing the conflict more difficult.
25) EU-wide dialogue of civilisations at the community level, including
broad-based public awareness programmes because in many countries in
the EU, the same as you need a converence on Security and Cooperation
in the Middle East, for many countries in the EU there are many
conflicts related to this, as we’ve seen over the last year, so
broad-based dialogue of civilisations.
26) Invitation of prominent Iranian musicians and artists on peace
tours and also vice versa. Including museums and galleries, promoting
culture and playing an educational role, so people actually understand
the civilisations and the countries involved.
27) Twinning of schools in the UK, Iran, the US, Middle East, Palestine, Israel.
28) An EU Commission and Ministerial level Peace-Building Summit. If
we’ve had summits for monetary systems, and for many others, there can
be an EU-wide peace-building summit to look at how to deal with these
issues. And I would suggest preceding it by training and preparation of
educational materials for the government officials involved, coupled
with
an EU-wide Civil Society Peace-Building Summit, building upon the
Dublin Summit three years ago and the New York summit at the United
Nations in July of last year, the Global Partnership for the Prevention
of Armed Conflict.
29) And also
an EU-wide Summit on Peace Education so that we’re
beginning to produce populations and political leaders with more
knowledge, capacity and tools to deal with conflict constructively.
30) Implementation on country-levels of national platforms for the
global partnership for the prevention of armed conflict action agenda.
In July in New York last year, there was the largest ever gathering of
civil society organisations, about 3,000 from all over the world,
looking at “from reaction to prevention”: how to prevent armed
conflict. They came up with action agendas. The Netherlands and many
other countries are beginning to develop national platforms for
working, within their countries, to implement the policies and
proposals of the action agenda. So that could be an initiative in the
UK by citizens, local authorities, the national government, to look at
how to implement this.
31) Begin a series of dialogues in the Middle East amongst veterans and
current soldiers of all sides. How many of you know that three weeks
ago for the first time ever, veterans and former combatants of the
Israeli defence force and Al Fatah, created a new organisation to
struggle against war? Former elite combat fighter pilots, former
bomb-makers, former trainers of suicide bombers, former Israeli
occupation soldiers have come together for the first time ever and
created a joint force for waging peace. There’s also the example of
Pugwash from the Cold War and the Retired Generals Associations and
there are many military all across the Middle East, as well as in the
United States and in Britain who have more level heads and who do not
support some of the policies being promoted. Creating quiet and
appropriate spaces for them to come together to be able to discuss
policy alternatives.
32) An international youth peace conference in Iran by Peace Child
International and Travel for Peace, for which there would be a lot of
support. Travel for Peace is a Norwegian organisation that brings
12,000 students to holocaust sites in Germany and Poland every single
year. Peace Child International (we actually have one of the Founders
and the Director right here in the room who could describe it much
better) has played a major role in helping to stimulate and engage
youth around the world in seeing what they can do themselves for human
rights, for peace work. So having a Peace Conference in Iran. I would
then say follow it by one in Washington and London where it’s also very
necessary.
33) Simple things, like
preparation of a 30-pages guide to
peace-building for EU citizens and governments, and another 30-pages
guide for citizens for intercommunity and intercultural peacebuilding.
Most people just have no idea of what is peace-building. You say
violence and war, and we have clear images. You say peace and it sounds
“theoretical, fancy, fairy, pretty, nice, ideal”. Fortunately, we’ve
spoken with doctors and they have just as much difficulty describing
health. (
laughter) But they
have built health systems. And as was
argued in the Atlanta City Council in the United States, when they were
promoting a resolution to vote for a Department of Peace in the US,
when responding to polio at first they did not know what to do or how
to deal with it: they marshalled their resources, they brought
scientists together, they set up a national response for dealing with
the situation. So, providing, as a mass education campaign looking at
the problems facing us in the world, a simple 30-pages (with pictures)
guide to peace-building for citizens and governments in Europe.
34) Guide to mass non-violent resistance, so in addition to preparing a
large force, to prepare a guide to mass non-violent resistance in the
possible lead-up to the war. Learning lessons also from the resistance
to the invasion of Iraq. So for example, if there had been say 6,000
international citizens in Iraq, politically war would have been
unviable. There were a few hundred. But if there had been 1,000 from
the UK, there would have been 1,000 from Germany, there would have been
at least a few thousand from the Scandinavian countries, two or three
thousand from the US would have come. We did not reach the critical
mass. Because for every one of those people, there’s also family,
there’s the people they went to school with, there’s the people they
went to jobs with. That could be one example but having a guide for
effective, responsible resistance to war, on all sides, including
building upon some of the fantastic work by… I’m sorry I’ll remember
his name later but he’s done some amazing work on looking at
non-violence in Islam and non-violent resistance in Islam. He’s at an
American university, he’s one of the most senior professors on Islam
and peace studies.
35) Begin dialogues with local politicians in your own community to
promote alternatives including at the level of local authorities and
city councils.
36) Learn from CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation) in the lead-up
to the Iraq war with a televised dialogue forum on forging peace,
bringing together people including citizen participation and having a
national televised dialogue, but focusing on what can be done and
alternatives, on all sides.
37) Media forums through print, radio and television discussing the
conflict and focusing on therapies and strategies, with examples from
what has been done elsewhere.
38) Policy statements by key sectors and begin getting them involved.
E.g. chambers of commerce, sports associations, students, unions,
veterans, artists, scientists (especially nuclear), nobel prize
winners: on steps for peace and refusing military strikes.
39) A meeting of nobel peace prize winners and peace workers for
proposals and high-level diplomacy.
Meeting of nobel physics and nobel
literature prize winners.
40) Beginning of mass education drive directed towards the armed
services on the obligation and ways they can disobey or refuse illegal
orders and promote peace, including support for resistors. Much of the
NATO bombing of Yugoslavia and Iraq violated the Hague conventions.
Most of the targets in the war in Yugoslavia for example were civilian
targets and there were a number of courageous Spanish and Portuguese
and other pilots who refused to fly their bombing runs because of the
types of weapons that they were dropping, which they knew were not for
taking out military…, they knew the targets they were being given were
not military sites. They are still in prison. So for example a captain
in the Spanish airforce is still in prison for having refused in 1999
to fly a bombing mission.
41) Use of the World Peace Forum in Canada which will be coming up in
June, as a platform for discussing alternatives and mobilising civil
society, and for peaceful transformation of the conflict.
42) And organise an International Day of workshops, dialogues,
trainings, vigils, celebrations, marches and strategy sessions on
September 21st which is International Peace Day, proclaimed by the
United Nations.
This is not a wish list. These are practical things that can be done.
Some of them may seem more difficult, which means they might take more
effort. But one of the major things that is systematically lacking at
the level of governments and others in dealing with many of these
situations is
practical politics, effective peacebuilding measures, and
imagination not constrained by dogma.
I do agree that we have a determined and ideological regime pursuing
populist policies. I’m not sure that it’s only in Tehran. And in
Tehran, as in London, as in Washington, there are many strands within
the governments. There are many different sectors. Within each country,
you can find some political leaders who’ve made abysmal statements. You
can also find many political leaders, business leaders and citizens who
are open to alternatives.
The problem with the dumbing down of policy as it’s presented by many
actors, whether by Tehran, London or Washington where we create a very
extremist, narrow frame of interpreting events, where we leave out
other aspects, and where we ignore or neglect key security concerns of
all actors, is that it limits our scope for what can be done.
Part of the point of peace work is to
engage in practical dialogues, to
respect the legitimate needs of all the actors involved, and to work to
come up with creative and constructive ideas that can help to transform
the conflict effectively. In this situation, there is a huge amount of
scope and possibility for that. The question of whether it will happen
depends on all of us.
Thank you.
