Negotiations have to inevitably take place regardless of where the conflict is - Yorkshire Post Letters

During any active war, the axiom is inevitable that we should ‘never talk to terrorists’, and the terrible consequences of terrorist action are always to be condemned without question.

But a look at the last century alone tells us that the status of 'terrorist' must, sooner or later, be changed to that of negotiator; any alternative can only imply extermination or genocide.

The prominent states-persons who come to mind to fit this category would include Jomo Kenyatta of Kenya and his Mau Mau group, Archbishop Makarios of Cyprus who led Eoka, and of course Nelson Mandela of the ANC. Margaret Thatcher once answered a question about the 'Free Nelson Mandela' campaign by saying that he was "...a terrorist who is in jail where he belongs".

The much respected sixth Prime Minister of Modern Israel himself, Menachem Begin was called 'terrorist' by the British government for his former activities with the group 'Irgun', and the word was specifically used by the Gestapo to describe the French Maquis.

When the Good Friday agreement was signed on April 30th 1998 by Tony Blair, Bertie Aherne and others, ending almost a century of bitter conflict, it was not a sudden outburst of spontaneous goodwill - it was the culmination of years of careful negotiations by people who knew people who knew people. To suggest that we must never ‘talk to terrorists’ is not in any way supported by past experience.

Of course, we must, somehow, sometime, begin to talk; any alternative would be unthinkable.