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An ad hoc group of senior diplomats and/or foreign ministers from three or more states created to coordinate their mediation of a conflict, typically by providing ‘contact’ between the adversaries in proximity talks. The first to put the new terminology in the lexicon was the Western Contact Group on Namibia, which was created in 1977 and consisted of representatives of Britain, Canada, France, the USA, and West Germany, which happened to be the Western states on the UN Security Council at the time - ‘The Five’. The Western Contact Group operated in a variety of theatres and with a variety of personnel, including Geneva, the capitals of The Five, the many black African capitals whose governments participated in the negotiations, and South Africa itself, where the ambassadors of the five states were its members. However, its original and chief focus was UN Headquarters in New York, where the permanent representatives of The Five, or more usually their deputies, constituted the original ‘Contact Group’. More recent examples include the Contadora Group and the Bosnia/Kosovo Contact Group, established in 1983 and 1994 respectively. |
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