The United Arab Emirates has shifted its strategy from direct talks with Iran to calling for international mediation.

Iran and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) are once again at each others’ throats over the three islands of Abu Musa, Greater Tunb, and the Lesser Tunb. This latest round of rhetorical warfare was instigated by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s official visit to the island of Abu Musa on April 11; a move that some described as “tactical”, aiming to stir nationalist sentiment ahead of the nuclear talks between Iran and the P5+1 in Istanbul.

Located in a strategic zone near the mouth of the Strait of Hormuz, controlling these islands would enable one to dominate the sea-lanes entering and exiting the Gulf, and hence it is understandable why Tehran and Abu Dhabi are in fierce competition over them.

Nevertheless, it would be simplistic to blame the ongoing rivalry between these two neighbours on the geopolitics of the islands’ location. Instead, blame partly lies with Britain’s “half-solution” to the dispute and its continuous refusal to either support or deny the sovereignty claims of either Iran or the UAE. It is also in Tehran and Abu Dhabi’s opposing readings of history that one can find the root causes of their contemporary antagonism. If anything, it could be argued, their mutual geostrategic interest in the islands should have paved the way for their cooperation, not their competition.

The islands dispute

As the traditional regional power that once dominated its entire neighbourhood, and endowed with geographic depth, natural resources, independent armed forces, and a relatively large population size, Iran’s approach towards the three islands dispute has been rigid and uncompromising.

Since 1971, Tehran has repeatedly stated that its rule over the islands was “absolute” and “certain”, while expressing a willingness to hold bilateral talks in order to “clear the misunderstandings”. Tehran also insists that it had a “gentlemen’s agreement” with the United Kingdom, whereby Iran retrieved its occupied islands in return for its acquiescence to Bahrain’s independence.

More recently, finally, reports have been circulated in the Iranian press that accuse Abu Dhabi of opportunism, describing its activism over Abu Musa as a “sober attempt to manipulate the issue, so to increase its own authority vis-a-vis that of Sharjah”.

To this end, Iranian officials allege that if the UAE was serious in its claims to the islands, it would have, at the very least, supported Iraq, Libya, South Yemen, and Algeria in the early 1970s when they, with the support of the Soviet Union, took the three islands issue to the UN Security Council. This is a charge that Emirati officials denounce outright, contending that it was literally impossible for the UAE government to back the Arab socialist camp, given the scale of intra-Emirate problems at the time of its unification in 1971/2, as well as the UAE’s own concern with the pan-Arabist forces and discourses in that period.

The UAE, on the other hand, has proved more flexible in its approach since 1992, when it began to pursue the issue wholeheartedly. Aware of its strategic need to accommodate its northern neighbour’s needs and concerns as well as Iran’s sensitivity over the issue, the UAE showed an initial preference for bilateral talks with Tehran – a preference which lasted until the end of Mohammad Khatami’s presidency of Iran. Realising that Tehran was less interested in talks and more interested in giving history lessons, Abu Dhabi, since 2006, has changed its strategy by seeking to internationalise the dispute, thereby using Tehran’s distorted international image to gain more backing for its efforts.

Recent remarks by the UAE foreign minister – that tension between the two countries could have global consequences – is a testimony to this. The UAE government has also sought third party mediation by countries that are on good terms with the Iranian regime, hoping that they may be able to encourage Tehran to soften its stance on the issue of islands.

Given close ties between Tehran and Beijing, for instance, the UAE took an extraordinary step in 2010 by asking Beijing to mediate between the two parties, while simultaneously calling on Tehran to take the issue to an international body for arbitration.

Calls for internationalisation

However, even internationalisation and/or securitisation of the issue seems unlikely to cause a change in Tehran’s stance, especially at this time of political change and strategic uncertainty in the region. To begin with, it is doubtful that Iran will respond positively to UAE calls for international arbitration – simply because doing so will, in retrospect, refute Tehran’s claims about its “undeniable sovereignty” over the islands.

What is more, Tehran knows all too well that any form of international negotiation, let alone compromise, over these islands will enflame the Iranian public and opposition who will certainly accuse it of endangering Iran’s territorial integrity, and so will seek to challenge its legitimacy to rule. At a time when regime’s popularity is at its lowest point, Tehran will undoubtedly do its best to avert such an eventuality.

More importantly, the UAE will need world powers’ overt cooperation and support if it is to successfully induce Iran into discussions about the islands. Nonetheless, there are good reasons to believe that such cooperation would not be forthcoming.

Britain will be reluctant to support the UAE’s cause at a time when London itself is locked in a heated dispute with Argentina over the Falkland Islands. China, too, will be hesitant to lend its backing to Abu Dhabi, as Beijing continues to utilise its long history as a justification for its sovereignty claims over a number of islands in the South China Sea. In other words, Beijing and London will be putting themselves in a very difficult position should they decide to support the UAE call for international adjudication, since any move in that direction will inevitably reduce their ability to refuse third party/international mediation in their own disputes.

As for the US and the EU, suffice to say that they are more likely to prioritise a resolution to Iran’s nuclear standoff with the West over the UAE’s territorial claims, especially since they seem to be making encouraging progress in their talks with Tehran. Put differently, Washington and Brussels are likely to avoid antagonising Tehran, and thus limit their efforts to the issuance of general statements that would call on Iran to cooperate with the UAE; a call that will fall on deaf ears in Tehran.

After all, the last thing Western powers want today is to alienate the Iranian public by backing the UAE over the three islands, as this will be seen as a direct threat to Iran’s territorial integrity in the eyes of the Iranian populace. This in turn will not only enable the regime to mobilise popular support for itself, but could also hinder efforts to resolve Iran’s nuclear standoff ahead of the Baghdad meeting.

A changing geostrategy

Looking ahead, there are strong grounds to assume that the ongoing tussle between Iran and the UAE will continue to complicate their bilateral relations in the coming years, but one can be certain that their rivalry is very unlikely to lead to a full-blown conflict.

Putting aside the strong cultural and communal ties between the two nations, they both realise the detrimental effects of such an outcome on their mutually beneficial and somewhat inter-linked economies.

Equally important, a full-out conflict is improbable because there is a broader geopolitical dimension to the three island dispute that deprives Abu Dhabi from the very international backing it needs to get concessions from Tehran.

A glance through the historical evolution of the three islands quarrel from the 19th century through the 1970s, the 1990s and up until the present illustrates that the contemporary brawl between Tehran and Abu Dhabi has always been linked to the geopolitics of the Middle East and the role of global power therein.

As such, the timing of the current flare-up makes it plausible to see the development as an indication of a changing geostrategic environment in the region; one that could benefit Iran above all the others if – and this is a big “if” – Iran and the P5+1 can come to an agreement in Baghdad.

In this case, and as Washington begins to shift its focus to the Asia Pacific region, it is possible to envision the gradual emergence of a strategic relation between Tehran and Washington; one in which Iran enjoys a greater freedom of action in the conduct of its regional affairs, in return for its constructive contributions to securing, albeit silently, US interests in Afghanistan, Iraq, and the Levant.

Nima Khorrami Assl is a security analyst at the Transnational Crisis Project in London.

KHARTOUM – A Chinese envoy was in Khartoum for talks on Sunday after his country backed a UN resolution that aims to halt border fighting between Sudan and South Sudan.

Zhong Jianhua arrived in the Sudanese capital on Saturday and was expected to leave on Sunday night after talks with government officials, a Chinese official said.

“I think mostly it’s about the current situation between the two Sudans,” said the official, who did not wish to be identified.

From Khartoum, Zhong will head to Addis Ababa and then to the South Sudanese capital Juba, the official added.

Zhong was to hold talks later on Sunday with Sudan’s Foreign Minister Ali Karti, the spokesman for Khartoum’s foreign ministry said.

China backed a unanimous May 2 UN Security Council resolution ordering Sudan and South Sudan to halt weeks of border fighting which raised fears of all-out war.

Despite the ceasefire call, Sudan’s army said last week there had been renewed combat along the disputed frontier, while the South said it again came under Sudanese air attack.

The UN resolution said the two countries must resume by this Wednesday stalled African Union-led talks, which were held in the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa, to settle issues unresolved after South Sudan separated last July under a peace deal that ended 22 years of civil war.

The issues include oil payments, the status of each country’s citizens resident in the other, disputed border areas and the contested Abyei region.

Analysts say China has been balancing its support between old ally Sudan and newly-independent South Sudan, which was the source of five percent of its oil until a shutdown in January.

South Sudan separated with about 75 percent of the former united Sudan’s oil production, but Juba still depended on the north’s pipeline and Red Sea port to export its crude.

The protracted dispute over fees for use of that infrastructure was at the heart of tensions which brought the two countries to the brink of all-out war and led South Sudan to halt its crude production.

South Sudan’s President Salva Kiir visited Beijing in April and received an $8-billion loan for infrastructure development in the impoverished country.

Source: http://www.middle-east-online.com/english/?id=52231

Aaron David Miller is a distinguished scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. His forthcoming book is titled Can America Have Another Great President?

Having spent the better part of two decades traveling the negotiator’s highway, I’ve often thought about why some deals get made along the way and others don’t. Granted, I’ve labored almost exclusively in the Middle East coal mines — an often bizarre, idiosyncratic, and exceptionally dysfunctional place where deals rarely, if ever, get done.

But paradoxically, failure can be instructive about the factors required for successful diplomacy. And clearly the Middle East offers up a pretty good testing ground for what hasn’t worked. Indeed, with so many canaries dying in those mines over the years, you’d think we’d have figured out by now how to keep them alive.

Every conflict in the world is unique, and there’s always a risk in overgeneralizing. But I think there are a number of core verities about how deals get done that transcend the politics, culture, and history of any particular dispute.

Let me apologize in advance to any number of graduate programs in conflict resolution, peace studies, and negotiation theory to which students (and their parents) contribute millions of tuition dollars every year in return for questionable high-brow theories expounded by many professors with no experience in either successful or failed negotiations. Save your money.

Here’s a low-brow but reliable guide to how and why deals get done. You can apply these principles to just about any negotiation anywhere, about anything that’s worth negotiating about.

1. Nobody Ever Washes a Rental Car

So spoke the ever-controversial, provocative, and — in my book — brilliant Larry Summers, former president of Harvard University and former U.S. Treasury secretary. One day wandering around Davos, he dropped this bombshell on me. It took me a full hour to figure out what Larry was talking about. But then it hit me. People, including you and me — not to mention Israelis and Arabs, Irish Catholics and Protestants, Americans and Russians — care only about what they own.

Without ownership, no negotiation worth anything can succeed, and if by some miracle it does, the agreement reached won’t last. The locals in the fray — whatever the conflict — need to invest enough in the outcome to make it work. That doesn’t mean they need do the deal all by themselves, without outside help. What it does mean is that the deal gets done largely because it’s in their vital interests to do it.

I’m not a great believer in the ripeness theory of conflict resolution. Historic disputes aren’t like apples or coconuts. They don’t just one day fall off trees. A conflict may never be ripe or ready for resolution, but sometimes catalysts — war, diplomacy — can shake the tree. When that happens, there has to be enough investment by the locals to survive the ups and downs and inevitable crises that mar any road to the deal.

Every breakthrough in Middle East diplomacy, from the Egypt-Israel peace accord to the 1991 Madrid peace conference, came in response to events that the locals themselves set into motion and that changed their calculations. Indeed, ownership — that elusive trait that pushes parties to do things they might otherwise not consider — must be homegrown. It can’t be artificially produced in some laboratory or in a would-be peacemaker’s bell jar.

2. Without Pain There’s No Deal

Ownership of tough decisions requires leadership. But even strong leaders won’t move unless there’s urgency. Without the threat of pain or the potential of gain, why would a leader — even an extraordinary one — want to risk decisions that could have existential consequences? (See: Egyptian President Anwar Sadat and Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin.) They won’t and they don’t. That’s why most successful Middle East diplomatic efforts were initially triggered by war and insurgency — for example, the October 1973 war, the Gulf War, and the First Intifada.

At the same time, pain alone isn’t enough. If it were, the Arab-Israeli conflict and any number of other global traumas would have been resolved long ago. Incentives are necessary too. It’s the marriage of the two that makes the deal possible. Sadat traumatized the Israelis by crossing the Suez Canal and inflicting serious losses on their forces, but he was able to offer a historic gesture of reconciliation by visiting Jerusalem four years later. The First Intifada was followed by the Oslo agreements, while the Second Intifada brought plenty of pain but had no diplomatic counterpart.

There’s an important caveat here. When one leader or side isn’t as compelled as the other to reach a deal, it can be fatal for the negotiation. Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak was semi-desperate for a deal at the July 2000 Camp David summit; Arafat wasn’t, sensed Barak’s panic, and used it to see whether he could reach a better deal.

This isn’t just a fact of life in the Middle East. Take a look at the recent crisis over Chinese dissident Chen Guangcheng, who in April fled house arrest to the U.S. Embassy in Beijing, which appears to have negotiated a deal with the Chinese government to allow him to travel to the United States. The Americans wanted a deal quickly and lost leverage as a result. The Chinese, on their home turf, could afford to wait.

3. Look, It’s the Food Processors

That’s what the inestimable James Baker, who served as President George H.W. Bush’s secretary of state, used to joke when he’d see his team members Dan Kurtzer and me bringing him another proposal or diplomatic fix. Urgency can get things started, but process is critically important to ink the deal.

Process gets a bad name. It’s easy to see why. Process can be endless and directionless; it can often hurt rather than help the chances of doing the deal. But when done right, it’s essential. Indeed, when you think about it, process is just another way of managing an issue you can’t resolve today.

Most conflicts evolved in phases, over time, and are resolved that way as well. It takes time to build trust and test the proposition that negotiations can get both sides what they want. Also, time is required to structure the agreements, particularly when issues of security are involved. The Egyptian-Israeli peace process played out over a period of almost nine years, from the first disengagement agreement in 1973 to Israel’s final withdrawal from Sinai in 1982. That process succeeded — but the Oslo process took about that long too, and it didn’t.

4. Where’s the Beef?

That brings us to perhaps the most important and obvious point about when negotiations succeed and fail: Does the negotiation successfully balance the interests of all parties? Does each side believe that it has a reasonable expectation of achieving its core requirements from the beginning?

Because nobody in life gets 100 percent of anything, both sides must adjust their expectations in any negotiation. I hear the Rolling Stones playing in the background. Whatever the real meaning behind their classic song “You Can’t Always Get What You Want,” they got it right as far as negotiations are concerned: You can’t always get what you want — but if you try sometimes, you just might find you get what you need.

Sadat may have wanted an agreement with the Israelis that would include Palestinian rights — but all he needed was Sinai to close the deal. The Palestinians and Israelis got neither what they wanted nor what they needed from the Oslo process, in large part because the gaps between them on the core issues weren’t bridgeable (and still aren’t) and because the incremental nature of the process itself worked against building up the trust required to reach a final deal.

In most situations, each side will affirm that its needs — in diplospeak, a leader’s “core requirements” — are met by submitting them to two tests. The leader must believe that he or she got the best deal possible; indeed, leaders have to hone these explanations to justify bold, risky action to their domestic constituencies. The second test is the agreement’s capacity to stand up to broader public scrutiny. Secret diplomacy may be required to start the process, but the terms of the deal must also measure up to the harsher light of public exposure. Also, it helps greatly if both parties to the accord are not trying to undermine the other by claiming who got the better deal.

There can be no games or funny business here. “Creative ambiguity” can sometimes start a process, but it’s fatal when it comes to trying to close one and reach an enduring agreement. The classic example is U.N. Security Council Resolution 242, which was passed after the 1967 Six-Day War and was intended to bring an end to the Arab-Israeli conflict. Egyptians, Israelis, Jordanians, and Syrians all accepted the resolution — but their differing interpretations of it, particularly on the issue of Israeli withdrawal from territory seized in the 1967 war, prevented it from pushing peace negotiations forward. Negotiations must produce what each side needs, and it must be clear from the beginning that if the negotiating is done in good faith it can achieve that result.

5. Power Politics Drives Diplomacy

It’s ironic that secretaries of state are deemed to be nonpartisan and that American interests are somehow construed to be above the political fray. In so many negotiations regarding conflict zones, it’s politics — how much space and credibility the leader has — that drives the deal. Henry Kissinger used to quip that Israel had no foreign policy, just domestic politics. And with 30-plus governments since independence, each lasting an average of less than two years, it’s easy to see why. Nor are authoritarian regimes immune from the pull of public opinion and feuding elites. And in the case of Arab leaders, regional pressures from other Arab countries can be a compelling factor for action or inaction.

It’s absurd to separate diplomacy and deal-making from internal politics. Barak went to Camp David in July 2000 to save his political future; Arafat wouldn’t accept what Barak offered because he believed it would be the end of his. Negotiators are also leaders who are accountable to their constituencies — if they are to transcend the forces in their societies who are opposed to an agreement and bring along those who are on the fence, they need a great deal of help from their negotiating partners and from outside parties ready and able to provide economic, military, financial, and political goodies.

It takes a rare leader to rise above domestic pressure and take bold actions that are in the best interest of their publics. Leaders are prepared to make tough calls, but not suicidal ones. American negotiators too frequently dismiss and trivialize the so-called politics of diplomacy. But no agreement can be reached or endure without a sustainable domestic consensus.

6. The Proverbial Third Party

If some of the conditions discussed above are present, the mediator has a chance of success. The problem, of course, is that all too often those conditions don’t exist. The result — no matter how much commitment and enthusiasm abound on the part of the third party — is failure.

The debate will rage on for years about the extent to which an outside party can serve as a catalyst to energize the locals in any dispute. My views on this matter have hardened considerably over the years, at least in the context of the Arab-Israeli conflict, which I know best. After all, failure can be life’s great teacher. America has the capacity to affect any situation. But it does not have the capacity to create the will and political courage for parties locked in an existential struggle. The United States has had a difficult time succeeding even when the above factors are present.

In the history of the Arab-Israeli negotiations, there’s no precedent for a successful U.S. initiative that wasn’t preceded by some bold act of war or diplomacy on the part of the locals. The inconvenient truth is that the old saw — so despised and ridiculed by peace

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Great relationships develop not from the absence of conflict, but from determining an agreeable pattern for how to resolve conflict. Defining the rules of engagement for how you “fight” with someone you care about is ultimately much more important than trying to never have a disagreement.

If you care about someone, then consider adopting these 10 rules as part of the way you communicate with them when you are trying to resolve a conflict:

Rule #1: Don’t yell.
Adding emotion clouds the clarity of what actually happened. If the other person is yelling, it becomes especially important that you don’t raise your voice so as to prevent a natural escalation of competing interests.

Rule #2: Always start and end the conversation by affirming that you care about the other person.
In the midst of a disagreement, you can never underestimate the power and importance of reminding the other person that you care about them and believe in them.

Rule #3: Be open to the idea that you made a mistake even if you are sure you did not.
People rarely get upset for no reason, so there is a good chance that there is at least a kernel of truth to what they are saying.

Rule #4: Don’t speak in generalities of another person’s behavior; speak only to direct examples and instances of action.
It’s hard for anyone to own up to a generalization and so you’ll likely just see his or her defensiveness activate. By isolating an instance of fact, everyone can quickly see where he or she was right and wrong.

Rule #5: Always work to be the first to apologize when any dispute arises.
Although the idea of waiting for the other person to apologize first seems vindicating, it’s actually a guaranteed sign of how you care more about being right than in coming to a reconciliation.

Rule #6: Focus on trying to discover what’s right, not who is right.
When thinking about what happened, try to remove yourself from the situation and evaluate rightand wrong based solely on the actions that took place regardless of which side you’re on. Treat it as if you are refereeing someone else’s game.

Rule #7: Do not cuss.
Exaggerated language is often proof of an exaggerated understanding of what actually happened. If you swear, the other party is likely to only hear the expletives and will stop listening for any validity in what you’re saying.

Rule 8: No name-calling.
Belittling a person always shifts the focus off of resolving the actual problem. Verbal abuse is never welcome to a conflict resolution party.

Rule #9: Remind yourself the other person also cares about reconciling the relationship.
One of the fundamental causes of many disagreements is feeling hurt that the other person is no longer considering your perspective, but if they didn’t care about a resolution with you they wouldn’t be fighting for one.

Rule #10: Remind yourself to never expect the other person to fill a hole in your life that only God can fill.
Sometimes we fall into the trap of placing improper expectations on other people because we are hoping for them to satisfy a need in our life that they are not really capable of satisfying.

If we are fighting with someone, it means we both care about finding the best course of action and we both care about preserving the relationship. If we didn’t care about one another, then we would just ignore each other and leave.

The reason these 10 rules are important is because as long as they are in place, then no disagreement or conflict will ever shake the critical bedrock of knowing that the other person cares about you. As long as we know the other person cares about us, it will give us a common ground to work from as we try to unite two seemingly conflicted views.

Provincial legislation unveiled Mon-day aims to dramatically reduce the time it takes to resolve some strata disputes and small-claims court cases by having them dealt with through an independent tribunal rather than in court. The legislation is expected to reduce resolution time to within 60 days, compared to up to 18 months to go to trial.

B.C. Justice Minister Shirley Bond said the new bill, the Civil Resolution Tribunal Act, will create an independent tribunal offering 24-hour online dispute-resolution tools to families and small business owners as a speedy and cost-effective alternative to court.

“Both individuals and business owners will find this a convenient and affordable way of reaching agreements,” Bond said in a statement.

“Few people want to go to court to solve a legal dispute, which can be costly, intimidating and time consuming. A tribunal offers an innovative alternative to settling a dispute in a faster, more amicable way.”

The tribunal would provide parties with information that could prevent disputes from growing and resolve them by consent or, where necessary, have disputes decided by an independent tribunal hearing.

Resolving a dispute through the tribunal is expected to take about 60 days, far shorter than the 12 to 18 months it takes those matters to proceed through small claims court, the government said.

The proposed online tribunal is also expected to reduce legal fees and travel costs for rural B.C. residents.

Earlier this year, a Green Paper report, Modernizing B.C.’s Justice System, identified tribunals as a simple and less costly solution to easing delays and backlogs in the court system.

The legislation proposes that the tribunals will make dispute-resolution services available to strata owners and offer an accessible, lower-cost alter-native to the current arbitration and court system. Residents would still have the option of taking small-claims cases and strata disputes to court.

The Provincial Court of B.C. hears about 18,000 small-claims cases each year. The government expects the tribunal will quickly resolve about 11 per cent of those cases, or 2,000 files, and another 1,000 property disputes a year. The tribunal service would have four stages, with participants progressing to the next stage if they are unable to reach agreement.

Tribunal members would be subject experts in the disputes they hear.

nhall@vancouversun.com

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