A more realistic strategy is to isolate the hardliners by cutting deals with individual insurgent commanders, and wooing disaffected tribal groups over to the government side.
Mr Shwe Mann enabled Ms Suu Kyi to become chair of a committee on the rule of law and riled hardliners by holding a debate on amending the constitution.
To take one example, in 1990, he offended Soviet hardliners by persuading Russia's leadership to support a United Nations resolution giving the United States and its allies permission to attempt to drive Iraq out of Kuwait.
Mitchell, who was appointed chairman of the all-party talks in June 1996 after 14 hours of negotiations in which unionists attempted to block his nomination, said he won round the hardliners by deploying his skills as a federal judge.
Pakistan's prime minister has risked enraging religious hardliners by ordering one of the country's top universities to honour a Nobel prize-winning physicist from a minority sect whose members are banned from describing themselves as Muslims.
Some believe the same fate could await another Chinese Christian governor, Cornelis of West Kalimantan, who has stoked the ire of hardliners by publicly warning radicals to leave his province.
The European Union too declared itself satisfied with Mr Kharrazi's "clarification" and said the last big hurdle to improving ties and so to commercial contacts—had been removed.Britain, and indeed the EU, seemed to be recognising that the Iranian government could not risk upsetting Iran's religious hardliners by denouncing the fatwa or cancelling the reward.
He argues that they raised their fingers to hardliners by voting for Hassan Rouhani, the moderate cleric, three years ago and once again throwing their weight behind the candidates favoured by Mohammad Khatami, who faces a great deal of restrictions on his movement and activities.
Abolhassan Banisadr, Iran's first post-revolution president, who lives in exile, lined up with domestic hardliners by comparing the deal to the humiliating 1828 treaty of Turkmenchay, under which Persia ceded to Russia control of much of the south Caucasus.
