|
 And it's worth recalling that the Oslo accords - which brought at least an uneasy handshake between Israel's Yitzhak Rabin and the PLO's Yasser Arafat in 1993 - started out in much the same way.
The fact is that the Libyan proposal might offer the best chance of getting some sort of negotiation ball rolling on Iraq this side of 2007. Though high hopes are being pinned on the Baker-Hamilton Commission, now rebranded as the Iraq Study Group, the machinery of Washington - its departments, agencies and lobby groups - grinds very slowly. Then there is always that not-so-splendid unilateralist Dick Cheney who is bound to try to chuck his spanner in the works.
As for the British Foreign Office, trying to get them involved is like swimming in treacle. No doubt their boss, Margaret Beckett, would think it might give comfort to those who shouldn't be comforted, or find some other excuse for continued diplomatic inertia.
The main problem is getting the right balance of interlocutors for the Iraqi people, including leaders of the Shia militias and the
|
|
 |
 |
 |
| It’s worth recalling that the Oslo accords started out in much the same way |
|
|
different centres of the Sunni nationalist insurrection. Channels do exist, however. The trick is getting the right mix of sponsors and players from inside Iraq and from among Iraq's neighbours.
The agenda should be a secondary consideration at this stage; the prime objective must be getting the parties together to talk. The experts should keep to the shadows but the likes of Sir Jeremy Greenstock and Sir Mark Allen, two of Britain's outstanding arabist diplomats, would no doubt be welcome if they presented their calling cards to a Tripoli conference.
No meaningful talks could be held inside Iraq with enough relevant participants in present circumstances. But Libya, after its diplomatic volte-face and surrender of its nuclear programme in 2003, is now neutral territory.
It is a Mediterranean hinge between the Middle East, Europe and Africa - perhaps the ideal venue for the first tentative steps to get a truly multi-lateral, international solution to the deepening crisis now engulfing a widening arc from the Lebanon, to Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan and Central Asia. 
FIRST POSTED NOVEMBER 15, 2006
 Robert Fox on Israel's Iranian ultimatum
More from our Middle East file
|
