Feuding Iraqis meet for secret peace seminar in Finland
HELSINKI: Representatives from feuding Sunni and Shiite groups were meeting behind closed doors on Friday to discuss ways of ending the bloodshed in Iraq, officials said.
Crisis Management Initiative, a conflict-prevention group headed by former Finnish President Martti Ahtisaari, said it was hosting a seminar to examine how lessons learned from peace processes in South Africa and Northern Ireland could be applied to Iraq.
"The only thing I can say is I was approached by those who have been organising this event, and (asked) whether they could come with the Iraqis to Finland," Ahtisari said.
Ahtisaari said he cleared the meeting and CMI's participation with the Finnish government. However, Ahtisaari, who was attending an unrelated peace conerence in Copenhagen on Friday, said he was not taking part in the Iraq seminar in Finland.
CMI said it was covening the closed-door meetings in conjunction with the John W McCormack Graduate School of Policy Studies of the University of Massachusetts Boston.
The Finnish Foreign Ministry said it was not involved in organizing the meetings.
Organizers would not say who was attending the seminar, except to say that both "Sunni and Shiite groups" had arrived.
Original article posted here.
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