Twin-track approach

It’s almost as if everyone is playing for time here, hoping that some fresh development will arise that gives a new lease of life to these present negotiations. Or quickly dispatches them to wherever all the others have gone before.

Either way, it’s time well and truly wasted and that sort of thing has caused more lives to be lost, hardened attitudes on all sides, reinforced entrenched positions and left the future in the hands of a very capricious fate.

This is the great danger in these discussions; too many conflicting viewpoints contend and clamour for attention. But time will not wait for solutions to be hammered out at so slow and lacklustre a pace. Whenever talks are in progress, they tend to be overtaken by events and then the entire process has to be started all over again. As sometimes happens, this can even be from the very beginning.

Ideally then, a twin-track approach should be adopted.

If the first track becomes congested for whatever reason, then progress on the second ensures that headway can still be maintained and positive expectations kept alive. Even though the primary route to peace may be blocked for a while, there is always this parallel conduit to assist in movement and provide stability whenever such hold-ups occur.