‘Would You Take Tea With Tyrants?’ is the question that journalist
Lyse Doucet put to politicians, diplomats and activists around the world. In an interesting article for the BBC she gets people who have dealt with the worst tyrants in modern history to open up about how they separate emotion from the need to conduct business and asks whether engagement is always the right thing to do. Ambassadors and envoys often talk to people they see as tyrants or terrorists. But why do they do it? Former Finnish President, Marrti Ahtisaari, a Nobel Prize winner advises, “You don’t need to love the people you talk to but you have to talk to everybody whose assistance you need to solve the problems.” Listen to the programme or read the article. Comments Norwegian Envoy, Jan Egeland.

If you want to make a difference where human rights are most at stake, you have to meet them”

Tags: diplomacy, diplomats, international negotiations, peace talks, peacekeeping, tyrants

This entry was posted on Monday, August 15th, 2011 at 2:15 pm and is filed under conflict & resolution, General, other interesting stuff . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.