The United Nations have applied strong pressure on the factions at war in Angola, one of them being a legitimate government, to force a reconcliation, inspite of the hundred of thousands of dead left over by a 20-year civil war.
In 1991, the Western powers insisted and obtained, after years of knee-jerking and drastic measures, including a blockade, that all warring Cambodian factions, including the notorious Khmer Rouge, sign an agreement providing for a reconcliation of enemies.
In Rwanda, Western powers who had thrown their lot behind the regime which triggered the 1994 genocidal massacres, have been insisting and intervening in favor of reconciliation between the killers and their victims.
In Liberia, the African nations are working to implement a conciliatroy approach which could lead to an end of the bloody civil war.
In South Africa, the political process of reconciliation has avoided so far the pitfalls of revenge and blood debt. Although this debt obviously exist, several political mechanisms have been elaborated to vent angers of sufferings from the past, without destroying the yet unstable political balance. So far, it is working.
In Germany, the bitter legacy of the 50-years conflict between East and West remains a bitter issue. Half-hearted trials and the massive use of the Deutschmark as a sedative have not been quite enough to doze out the flames of revenge. But bloodspilling seems to be averted.
The Dalai-Lama denonces the cultural genocide applied with the most incredible brutality by the Chinese governement in a country which had never been Chinese before 1950, and still advocates reconciliation.
In Afghanistan, no reconciliation was ever intended and the savage civil war goes on, even after the reasons of its beginning have been forgotten by almost all factions at war.
The Western powers have maintained the war in Yugoslavia for more than two years in a vain attempt to recreate multiethnic political entities (Bosnia, Mostar, etc.) where a cruel war had already created monoethnic zones.
An enormous pressure seems to be applied, without the slightest result, to induce the Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu on the road to reconciliation. Everyone sees these attempts are both naive and hopeless.
To sum it up, it seems that reconciliation is the key to the solution of conflicts, when it is obvious that their continuation is more harmful than profitable to all parties concerned.
Mr. Roman Herzog, President of Germany, recently came to Paris and visited the main synagogue there. He said Germany was offering anything it could to obtain a reconciliation. He said Germany was waiting for a response. None came. Instead more empty bitterness and more silly claims were laid by self-appointed representatives of undescribed communities.
In Croatia, the governement has tried to create a "Memorial for Reconciliation", by burying together Oustachi militants and warriors, allies of Hitler during WWII, and Communist partisans, who fought them and controled the country for more than 50 years, with brutal repressive methods.
This move is opposed by the Croatian Jewish community (<Le Monde>, 29 oct. 1996) : "His (President Tudjman's) action is considered as pure historical revisionism" by the said community, by unnamed "experts of WWII" and, of course, by the slavish Western journalist. The Paris Wiesenthal Center said this action "is not an act of reconciliation but a perverted lesson given to the new generations on the continuity between the Croatian Oustachi militias and today's Croation army".
How do we explain the fact that some are OPPOSING reconciliation as a political tool for the settlement of conflicts? WHY is it that these people are not interested in the real settlement of conflicts? WHAT do they get from the continuation and intensification of conflicts? WHY are they allowed to interfere in reconciliation processes which are obviously profitable to a majority of people?
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