John Bruton: “One unwanted price of violence is to ask for unrealistic demands”

They are representatives of Libyan civil society (political parties, electoral commissions or city council journalists, members of NGOs) from five cities (Darna, Benghazi, Azawia, Zelitin, and Ubary).

“One unwanted price of violence is to ask for not realistic demands”, he said, referring to the difficulties to negotiate with two very polarised sides as the unionists and nationalists were, both with their “martyrs” and hard sacrifices in the past.

So, his recommendation to the libyan activists was to be “very, very patient”. He warned: “This will take a lot of time. You’ve got to be unnaturally generous with the other side”. He also added a measure he took in the negotiations that brought peace in 1998: to negotiate in parallel the political structure and the weapons problem.