Swiss-led peace talks a flop as Russia left out

DID the Swiss-mediated Burgenstock peace conference collapse because the organisers did not study how delicate peace negotiations are conducted? Did the conference fail because Russia was not invited?

In the past, the 1993 Oslo Accords temporarily halted Israel-Palestinian wars. Similarly, the 1998 Good Friday Agreement brought peace between Britain and the Irish Republican Army.

The Oslo process was started in 1992-93 by Terje Larsen, a Norwegian sociologist, and Yossi Beilin, a member of Israel’s Labour Party government that had come to power in 1992. This had the backing of Israeli leaders and Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) chief Yasser Arafat.

Since the Israeli law banned contacts with the PLO, Larsen and Beilin set up a secret backchannel between two Israeli professors and three PLO leaders, including Ahmed Qurei. Their first meeting was held during January 1993 at the residence of then Norwegian Defence Minister Johan Jorgen Holst. The US Department of State archive says “strict secrecy allowed the negotiators to discuss scenarios and potential concessions without incurring domestic political costs.”

In May 1993, Israel decided to elevate the talks to the official level and sent then Director General of Foreign Ministry Uri Savir. In August that year, the Israeli and Palestinian chief negotiators initialled the Declaration of Principles on Interim Self-Government Arrangements (DOP) in Oslo. The formal signing ceremony was held at the White House in September, when Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and PLO chairman Arafat ‘shook hands’.

Although permanent peace remained elusive, the Oslo Accords were an important milestone in West Asian peace, like the 1978 Camp David Accords, brokered by US President Jimmy Carter, between Egyptian President Anwar Sadat and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin, bringing peace between Egypt and Israel. Together with the DOP, the agreement also included ‘Letters of Mutual Recognition’, through which the PLO recognised the existence of Israel for the first time.

Israel also recognised the PLO as the legitimate representative of the Palestinian people. Besides, Israel committed itself to withdrawing from parts of the Gaza Strip and the West Bank and acknowledged the Palestinian right to self-rule in those territories under a Palestinian Authority.

Similarly, Senator George Mitchell, who was designated as a ‘Special Envoy’ by then US President Bill Clinton, had to toil between September 1996 and April 1998 to bring in peace in Northern Ireland, ending 30 years of violence. He had to overcome hostility from the ‘unionists’, who wanted Northern Ireland to remain with Britain, as they felt that President Clinton had imposed mediation efforts to their detriment.

It is said that they also opposed secret talks in a foreign place away from Belfast, as they wanted to avoid the possibility of being politically ambushed away from their home base. Mitchell’s tactic was his infinite patience to listen to the opposing parties whose hostility to each other was so intense that there “was very little inclination to listen to the other side, let alone compromise with them,” as he told an interviewer later.

The cardinal principle in all such negotiations is the secrecy of proposals put across by contending sides so that no embarrassment is caused to either of them by sending wrong signals to their constituents. The organisers should have studied an old CIA document (1992), ‘Analytic Support for Peace Talks’, released by its think tank, Centre for the Study of Intelligence, as a guide to sensitive peace negotiations.

True, Swiss Foreign Minister Ignazio Cassis was quoted as saying by the media at the UN that several secret plans were being considered to bring peace in Ukraine. He was also quoted by TASS in January telling the Davos conference that Russia should be invited. Why then was Moscow not invited? As a result, the conference became a routine meeting of support to Ukraine, with 80 countries signing the resolution. However, India, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Thailand, Indonesia, Mexico and the UAE chose not to sign, besides Brazil, which attended as an ‘observer’.

It is not that Switzerland is not experienced in backchannel diplomacy. It looked after American interests shortly after the Islamic Revolution in 1979. Gulf News said in 2020 that the US and Iran had exchanged several messages through Berne after the US killing of Gen Qasem Soleimani in January 2020. It came hours after the American drone strike. Iran responded by condemning the attack through the Swiss. Similarly, America used Switzerland to talk to Cuba when they did not have diplomatic relations.

However, would this, by itself, qualify Berne to be an interlocutor unless it wins the confidence of both sides? History has many other instances of backchannel negotiations (BCNs) succeeding or at least reducing tensions. An Oxford University compendium quotes several instances, beginning with President Richard Nixon’s secret approaches to the Soviet Union and Vietnam in the 1970s, Nelson Mandela’s contacts with South African leaders during the 1980s/1990s for ending apartheid and the 2016 Colombian agreement with the insurgent group FARC.

This compendium, like the CIA handbook, gives different stages in BCNs to be effective. The first stage is called ‘pre-negotiations’, which explores the desire of both parties to talk. They need to have trust in the negotiator country as it shares highly confidential information.

A third-party mediator is always preferred since opposing parties would not like to sit across the table. “These discrete communications ultimately allow parties to move away from unilateral, conflict-based approaches to a political problem and engage in a mutual exploration of their options before the start of formal peace talks,” according to the compendium. None can do this type of negotiation with nearly 100 delegations participating, as we saw at Burgenstock.

The CIA document lists the initial difficulties of bringing the opposing parties to the face-to-face talks: “The opening session can take on the air of a battlefield without lethal weapons.” It mentions several other problems, like both parties exaggerating their own strength for “vying for advantage”. Another difficulty that it mentions is the efforts of “extremists on both sides who are determined to undermine the agreement”. To sum up, BCNs are not as easy as arranging an international conference.

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