Sveits utenriksminister, Micheline Calmy-Rey, tror på dialog, om det så er med Osama bin Laden. Hun sa dette under en tale til landets 150 diplomater i slutten av august. AFP var til stede og rapporterte dette heller oppsiktsvekkende statement, til ministerens konsternasjon. Sveitsisk UD mobliserte av alle krefter og ministeren skrev brev til AFP sentralt og antydet at AFPs sjef i Sveits bør sparkes.
Switzerland’s foreign minister on Monday broke with the country’s tradition of studiously discrete diplomacy by raising the possibility of direct talks with Osama bin Laden to tackle global terrorism.
Micheline Calmy-Rey, who has raised both eyebrows and hackles with her controversial style, told Swiss ambassadors gathered in the capital Bern that they needed to talk to “heavyweight political figures” on the world stage even if they are considered persona non grata by other powers.
“It is important to get away from a Manichean view of the world in black and white, where peoples and countries can only be allies or enemies,” she said.
If this view prevailed, Israel would never have held talks with the Palestinians, Nepal would never have talked to Maoist rebels — and the international community would have boycotted the Olympic Games in Beijing, she said.
“So should we listen to these ‘wise figures’? Or should we continue dialogue without discrimination – even sitting down at the same table as Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden?,” she asked rhetorically.
Calmy-Rey told more than 170 Swiss ambassadors and consular officials meeting this week in Bern that she always favoured dialogue over sanctions and isolation.
“The refusal of dialogue is always a sterile choice,” she said, adding that for Switzerland, “the only force we have ever had is that of words.”
Switzerland does not have any list of banned organisations to which it will not talk, unlike other countries.
“We talked to Hamas and Hezbollah and other Islamist organisations, we talked to the most diverse groups in Kosovo, because they clearly expressed the legitimate interests of the population,” she said.
“By doing this, we did not legitimise their methods, but pushed them towards ending violence,” she added.
Calmy-Rey said that groups as diverse as Hezbollah, the FARC guerrillas in Colombia, Tamil Tiger rebels in Sri Lanka and the Lord’s Resistance Army in Uganda are all “essential in the search for a resolution” of different conflicts worldwide.
Switzerland does not rule out talking to bin Laden
Redaktøren av Weltwoche skriver at Calmy-Rey ønsker å forvandle Sveits til en humanitær supermakt (lyder velkjent). I mars var hun Teheran og inngikk en gassavtale til 20 milliarder dollar. USA var ikke blid. Calmy-Rey poserte med sjal sammen med Ahmadinejad.
Calmy-Rey viser aktivistiske trekk, som er uvant for Sveits. I 2006 ymtet hun frempå at Sveits og Iran burde holde en konferanse og diskutere divergerende oppfatninger av Holocaust. Det ble med tanken.
Ms. Calmy-Rey wants to turn Switzerland into a moral superpower. It is a morality, however, that is firmly anchored in the left-liberal mainstream that seems to have lost its moral compass. She shares the aversion of Europe’s general public toward the U.S. and Israel. There is an emotional resentment of globalization and a belief against all evidence that, in the end, only broad-based development aid can improve the lives of the poor.
It was only logical then that Ms. Calmy-Rey would recommend the old socialist Jean Ziegler, of all people, as a human rights adviser to the United Nations. The controversial co-founder of the “Moammar Gadhafi Human Rights Prize” is a friend of Fidel Castro and an advocate of Hugo Chávez and naturally an unmerciful critic of “American imperialism” and Israel. Switzerland was also the only European country to vote in favor of last month’s one-sided anti-Israel resolution at the U.N. Human Rights Council. Ms. Calmy-Rey has a natural talent for alienating Switzerland’s most reliable partners.
It is a miracle that her most disastrous act so far went almost unnoticed. In December 2006, she received an Iranian delegation for talks on the nuclear program. To the horror of her closest colleagues, she came up with the idea of improving relations by holding a “seminar on differing perceptions of the Holocaust.” One must understand the enormity of this: Ms. Calmy-Rey suggested a debate in Switzerland with Iranian Holocaust deniers on whether the murder of six million Jews actually happened. Fortunately, nothing came of this idea. It would not only have been outrageous, but also illegal, since genocide denial is a crime in Switzerland. She is isolated in the government, and her colleagues seem to grow more skeptical. But they do not speak out openly against her.
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