Otto von Bismarck Quotes

I am not authorized to make peace.

I don't want to force the peacekeeping nations to feel like I'm pushing them out.

Compulsory arbitration is a practical instrument of pacification and, as such, it can and should be enacted by the Hague Conference.

You can only end a negotiation for peace if you begin it.

I think no one could have made peace in Bosnia besides Holbrooke.

If you want peace, you don't talk to your friends. You talk to your enemies.

I am certain that we need a solution completely separate from military intervention.

I think most conflicts do end with negotiated settlements; some don't, but most do.

If we examine the Hague Convention carefully, we see that it considers the offer of good offices a duty of every nation. In other words, such offers should be made whenever a dispute becomes critical and threatens to explode into war.

If you want to bring an end to long-standing conflict, you have to be prepared to compromise.

The task of the mediator is to help the parties to open difficult issues and nudge them forward in the peace process. The mediator's role combines those of a ship's pilot, consulting medical doctor, midwife and teacher.

Peace is not wimpy. It's about sitting down and negotiating with people you hate. Ultimately, all occupation ends, and you have to deal with the enemy.

It is our duty to persuade the nations of the world, in whatever way that we can, to settle their differences in some other way. (Other than war)

The UN is ultimately going to be judged on its ability in conflict resolution and conflict prevention.

Peacemaking and peacekeeping should run in parallel.

We have to develop preventive diplomacy.

Conflicts between nations will continue to arise. The real issue is whether they are to be resolved by force, or by resort to peaceful methods and procedures, administered by impartial institutions.

There is a middle ground between sitting on our hands and sending in the marines.

It is impossible for either nations or individuals, in the management of a dispute, to have the benefit of two opposite chances. They may be, from the first, moderate, pacific, magnanimous; they will thus secure certain advantages, and they will lose possible advantages. They may, on the contrary, be haughty, warlike, and selfish ; their chances and advantages will then be the reverse of the former. It is impossible to unite the two.

Our fundamental goal in getting involved in Bosnia in the summer of 1995 was to end the war. Richard Holbrooke's fundamental goal was to negotiate a peace: a peace that was sustaining and self-sustaining over the long term.

Now, it's high time for all those that have an influence on the parties with the conflict to understand that it is in the interest of everybody to put an end to this conflict. But this kind of persuasion, this kind of intense pressure, I believe it's my duty to do, even if I recognize that the contradictions and the different perceptions of interest that exist are making it very difficult.

It's very easy to start a war but the muftah, as the Arabs say, the key to switch off a war, is very difficult to find.

I'm not a mediator or a negotiator. I don't want to be one.

The full potentialities of human fury cannot be reached until a friend of both parties tactfully intervenes.