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Published on July 9, 2007

Conflict is endemic to humanity, yet there are so many determined to work selflessly in the cause of peace. Mingle with them, however, and the reality is less comforting. Making peace may be mankind's intuitive impulse, but the path toward peace is littered with obstacles.

Pity poor Martti Athisaari, who has framed an excellent plan for the future of Kosovo, endowing independence on the mainly ethnic Albanian enclave whilst preserving autonomy for the small Serbian minority in the North. Despite this effort to deal a fair hand, the former Finnish president's admirable plan is stuck in a quagmire of great power rivalry.

Russia wants to block the plan at the United Nations Security Council, whilst Europe can't decide what to do in response, and many member states believe that independence for Kosovo will open the door for many a restive province to vie for its freedom.

Similarly, reasonable and workable formulas for peace in the Middle East between Israel and the Palestinian territories have been worked out in great detail. Yet mediators have to sit around and wait for the international community to agree on the pre-conditions for negotiations to take place. It is commonly asserted that nothing can be done without the United States, which seems in no hurry to move.

And yet so much stability could flow from reaching a negotiated settlement in any one of the several conflicts that cling like ancient barnacles to the region.

Take the case of Syria and Israel. Several years of patient work, spearheaded by Switzerland, has prepared the ground for peace between the two countries based on a deal over the Golan Heights, which were seized by Israel in 1973.

Removing one more Arab state from the list of Israel's enemies would seem to make a lot of sense; so would the stability that would surely ensue in Lebanon. Yet the mediation is stuck at the informal level because Syria insists that the next steps should be taken by officials, and Israel has so far refused to come forward on this basis.      

More frustrating for a group of people fanatically dedicated to dialogue, is the growing list of armed groups no one is supposed to talk to because of their commitment to violence. To the mediator this is quite an absurd position to take. Imagine refusing to dialogue with men of violence? 

If there are pragmatists within the Hamas movement, and more broadly within the Islamic brotherhood, we will never know unless we engage with them. Long experience teaches mediators that dialogue does encourage terrorist organisations to gradually abandon the path of violence, Northern Ireland being a case in point. 

Instead, the international community has introduced a new barrier to mediating conflict, which is to distinguish between those who fight rationally and those who espouse extremism. 

Somehow there's a difference between the deadly goals they pursue, perhaps because one group is supposed to play by established rules, the other does not. Those branded as extremists are now beyond the pale and no one should engage with them, for they are to be exterminated.

Mediators know from long experience that it is foolish to shut violent men out of the meeting room. One frustrated UN mediator, Alvaro de Soto said as much in a leaked end-of-mission report following his tenure as the UN's Middle East envoy. The Peruvian diplomat favoured dialogue with Hamas, the Islamist party that won free and fair elections to lead the Palestinian Authority in December 2005.

"At best I have been the UN special coordinator for the Middle East peace process in name only," he wrote in his report, "and since the election of Hamas, I have been the secretary-general's personal representative to the Palestinian Authority for about 10 minutes in two phone calls and one handshake."

So when mediators gather, the talk turns to managing political powers rather than mediating between them. Under what conditions will the Quartet allow engagement with Hamas? Will Russia torpedo the Athisaari plan in the UN Security Council? Mediators tend to see themselves as nursing sick and wounded peace processes that never seem to make a full recovery.

Is there a way out of the current impasse on the peace front apparently rooted in a protracted post-Cold War contest for power? The United Nations is supposed to be able to rally support behind efforts for peace.

But as the appalling humanitarian situation in the Darfur region of Sudan suggests, the UN is itself increasingly hamstrung by big power rivalry.

Perhaps the mediators ought to declare independence. They can't, of course. Mediators serve the parties to conflict; rather like professional waiters in a high-class restaurant, there are times they want to empty the soup bowl into the patron's lap.

Instead they take insult and adversity on the chin and serve the next course. No one would want to see them go on strike for better terms and conditions.   

Michael Vatikiotis is Regional Director for Asia of the Centre for Humanitarian Dialogue. He recently attended the Oslo Forum, a gathering of mediators and peacemakers organised by the Centre and supported by the Royal Norwegian Government. 

Michael Vatikiotis

Special to The Nation