It begins promisingly, with a potted history of the conflict acknowledging that everything about the story is hotly contested.
All parties to the conflict acknowledge that talks and fighting will go on, at least for some time, side by side.
Such statements of empathy cost nothing but, as has been demonstrated repeatedly in situations of conflict, acknowledging the pain one side has inflicted on the other is essential if peace is to be achieved.
The United Nations reported that out of 5,000 male concentration camp detainees held near Sarajevo during the Bosnian conflict, 80 percent acknowledged having been abused sexually.
President Clinton publicly described for the first time his specific proposals on how to solve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and acknowledged that a final settlement would not occur on his watch, in a farewell address to the American Jewish community.
De Beers, which has begun a publicity campaign to distance itself from "conflict diamonds," acknowledged that it had a 4percentt stake in the Belgian operation, run by a Congolese government agency.
In a farewell address to an American Jewish group last night, President Clinton, in the plainest language he has used so far, described for the first time his specific proposals on how to solve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and acknowledged that a final settlement was highly unlikely on his watch.
Gareth Evan, a former foreign minister of Australia who is now the president of the International Crisis Group, which specializes in conflict prevention, acknowledged last month that many of Australia's efforts to train a more professional Indonesian military had "helped only to produce more professional human rights abuses".
Agonistics suggests that such conflict, if acknowledged and facilitated, has the potential for fostering innovative responses and reducing the likelihood of one perspective dominating the others.
