UN envoy upbeat oslo process still valid, despite standstill

A top United Nations envoy said Wednesday even though the "Oslo process" was at a standstill, its basic principles remained valid while an international consensus was building around new precepts and mechanisms that could lead to a sustainable accord between the two parties to the crisis.

Delivering a lecture in the Norwegian capital, where an effort to bring peace to the Middle East began a decade ago, Terje Roed-Larsen, the UN Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process said "Ten years later the process of Oslo has collapsed; the institutions it gave birth to are shattered and almost destroyed, and the spirit that fuelled it is being drowned out by violence, recriminations and distrust."

In the lecture titled, "The Current Crisis in the Middle East: Causes and Solutions," which he delivered at an annual event hosted by the Nobel Institute, Roed-Larsen stressed that despite systematic dismantling of the essential elements of peace - including trust and dialogue, there was a deep international consensus - shared by a majority of both peoples, if not their leaders - on how the conflict must end.

However, the UN official conveyed a grim image of the situation where acts of violence had eroded the remnants of trust between the parties and dialogue faltered. At the same time he noted, the living conditions of the Palestinians had collapsed, and the Palestinian Authority institutions had sustained fundamental damage.

"We are left with two peoples wracked by violence, a situation in which there is not only no dialogue between the parties and their governments, but where dialogue has been replaced by hatred and fear," he said. "Unless we exit from the current violence - and quickly - the future for both peoples will be untenable."

Roed-Larsen underscored that basic principles on which the Oslo process was based remain valid, namely land for peace, based on Security Council resolutions 242 and 338; the end of occupation; total rejection of violence and terrorism; the need for security for both parties.