Word: madrid
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Gorbachev, diminished as he is, has his own important contribution still to make. Using what is left of his office, he can supervise an open-ended negotiation over territory, borders, security and the rights of minorities. Sounds familiar, doesn't it? That's why Gorbachev's experience in Madrid last week may come in handy at home...
...Madrid was the easy part. Delegates had only to stake out a position, not cede an inch of ground. The course toward peace is pockmarked with sandpits, potholes and booby traps. If you plan to stay tuned, be ready for a long, long siege, marked by proclamations of self-sacrifice and ritualistic outbursts of indignation. And be wary of the press leaks of success/failure that are sure to follow. Any real bargaining will be behind closed doors, and the only reliable evidence of progress will be public statements of mutual commitment...
...Madrid the delegates presented very tough -- and very familiar -- opening positions...
...denounced each other and laid their cases before the world, but nobody walked out. At the end of three days it was uncertain, in the most literal sense, where the talks were going: the delegates concluded the opening phase by quarreling bitterly about whether they should continue meeting in Madrid or move to some different venue...
...history books. No amount of confrontational rhetoric could obscure the simple fact that Israelis, Palestinians and other Arabs, sworn blood enemies for more than four decades, were sitting around a table, talking. The speechmaking in the tapestry-hung Hall of Columns of the Royal Palace in Madrid that opened the Middle East peace conference was, like a wedding or a baptism, a solemn rite symbolizing a new beginning. Come what may, the Mideast crisis, perhaps the longest-running and most envenomed in the world, had passed the point where the antagonists would not even talk...