IF EVEN THE IRISH CAN DO IT...:

Arab Ministers Agree To Revive Initiative For Mideast Peace (Glenn Kessler, 3/27/07, Washington Post)

Arab foreign ministers agreed to relaunch a five-year-old peace initiative with Israel, including establishment of a working group to begin negotiations on the plan, according to reports from Riyadh, the Saudi capital.

"The initiative includes a mechanism to promote it and gain its acceptance and especially registering it officially at the United Nations," Saudi Foreign Minister Saud al-Faisal told reporters. "That's what's going to happen, so that it becomes a basis and a major reference point for peace in the Middle East."

Under the plan, Arab nations would recognize Israel if it gave up land occupied after the 1967 Middle East war and granted Palestinian refugees the right to return to their homes lost six decades ago when Israel declared it was a state.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, traveling this week in the Middle East, has pushed Arabs to back the long-dormant plan as the basis for negotiations, not a take-it-or-leave-it proposition. Both U.S. and Israeli officials said they were pleased by the decision, which will be formalized later this week at a summit of the Arab League.

MORE:
In Indonesia's Aceh, a former rebel takes the reins (Seth Mydans, March 27, 2007, International Herald Tribune)

[ Irwandi Yusuf, the new governor of Aceh,] is a one-man political science experiment, a separatist rebel who has, quite unexpectedly, become the leader of the government he until recently fought against.

Under a peace agreement signed in 2005, Irwandi renounced his separatist agenda, ran for governor last December and won, taking almost 40 percent of the vote in a field of eight. The second-place finisher was also a member of the former separatist movement, bringing its total to more than 50 percent of the votes cast.

Irwandi took office at the start of February and is now guarded by the army that once hunted him in the jungle. He works with a police force that was known for its brutal treatment of his comrades. He travels to Jakarta to talk policy with President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, himself a former general.

He has no alternative but to leave the past behind, he said. Most of the people he works with are his former enemies.

Military intelligence still watches him, he said, as it did in the past, and he expects hard-line opponents to try to complicate his job with political manipulation. But the agreement that ended Aceh's 30-year separatist war is holding - after the death of 15,000 people - and both sides seem to have embraced nonviolence.