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[ Presenting plain-text part of multi-format email ] An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, right? Not in capitalism. It's more profitable to arrest minorities than treat their addictions, it's more profitable to treat AIDS than it is to give out condoms, it's more profitable to hospitalize the dying for a week than it is to euthanize, it's more profitable to bomb Afghanistan than it is to feed them, the war on terror is more profitable than terror prevention. The following is an interesting piece about "preventive diplomacy" from 1996. It's no surprise that pre-emptive strikes would get more media coverage than preventive diplomacy. >>Societies simmering on the brink of war... What strategies work to prevent them from boiling over? LJUBICA ACEVSKA, Ambassador of Macedonia to the U.S.: The best way to resolve conflicts are via political dialogue. Even where there have been wars, at the end of the day, the warring parties have had to sit down and work out their problems. JIMMY CARTER, U.S. President, 1977-81: The basic premise of mediation is to make sure that every time any side makes a concession that the benefits exceed what they give up. And you have to have a constant realization that no agreement, no matter how nice it may look on paper, is going to last unless both sides feel that they have won. ["AMERICA'S DEFENSE MONITOR" program introduction.] NARRATOR: Today there is an emerging consensus among policymakers around the world that early action to keep regional disputes from exploding into full-scale wars saves lives and resources in the long run. TOBY GATI, Assistant Secretary of State for Intelligence and Resources (Senate Hearing, 22 February 1996): "We spent several billion dollars on humanitarian crises in Africa and on sending in American troops and troops of other countries. Nowhere near the amount was spent in preventive diplomacy or in assistance, which might have forestalled some of those actions. And most people looking back on it would say the opportunity was lost at a much less cost to avert some of those crises." NARRATOR: Whether it's mediation between two adversarial groups, deploying peacekeeping forces while there's still a peace to keep, providing appropriate development assistance, or broadcasting balanced media programming to counter ethnic hate rhetoric, actions taken before tensions boil over into armed conflict can often keep a country at peace. This post-Cold War framework for addressing regional disputes is variously called "preventive diplomacy," "preventive action," and "conflict prevention." Increasingly, it involves governments coordinating their peace-oriented interventions with international organizations and nongovernmental groups. President CARTER: The thing that needs to be understood, too, is that now in the world almost every one of the wars are civil wars. They're not between two nations anymore. NARRATOR: Former President Jimmy Carter is probably the highest profile "citizen-diplomat" in the world, mediating disputes in places such as Haiti, Bosnia and North Korea. President CARTER: The United Nations was founded and was organized to deal with conflicts between two nations, not inside a country. And it's totally inappropriate for a UN official even to communicate with a revolutionary group just trying to overthrow a government that's a member of the UN. So, this means that unofficial groups like the Carter Center I hope will be used more and more in the future. NARRATOR: By examining efforts at conflict prevention in two very different countries -- Burundi in central Africa and Macedonia in the South Balkan region of Europe -- this program will explore what works and what doesn't in the evolving field of preventive diplomacy.<< continued at... http://www.cdi.org/adm/1012/transcript.html --------------------------------- Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Mail Plus - Powerful. Affordable. Sign up now _______________________________________________ Sent via the discussion list of the Campaign Against Sanctions on Iraq. To unsubscribe, visit http://lists.casi.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/casi-discuss To contact the list manager, email casi-discuss-admin@lists.casi.org.uk All postings are archived on CASI's website: http://www.casi.org.uk