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Negotiations conducted between hostile parties via an intermediary, usually at the same venue but without face-to-face contact between the adversaries. Commonly occasioned by the refusal of one party to recognize the legitimacy of the other, their physical proximity at least makes the intermediary\'s task of communication somewhat easier, and also has propaganda advantages for both parties: to the one refusing recognition, that of signalling to the outside world that this obstacle will not be allowed to stand in the way of peace; to the one anxious to obtain it, that of suggesting that recognition is no longer so far off. The UN-brokered negotiations on the Greek island of Rhodes during 1949, which led to armistice agreements between Israel and her four Arab neighbours, were something in the nature of proximity talks. Such talks under UN mediators were also employed at the Palais des Nations in Geneva in the mid-1980s to produce a settlement between Afghanistan\'s Soviet-backed regime and Pakistan, as the latter refused to recognize the former. They were also employed by the United States at the talks held in 1995 in Dayton, Ohio (at an air force base) with a view to generating a breakthrough on the problem of Bosnia. See also contact group. |
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