A very modest yet commendable proposal. I hope that the National Assembly will heed this call for a rational foreign policy forged in open public debate rather than surrendering the Gambian sovereignty to Yaya's diplomatism and personality cult that serves nothing but Jola ethno-centric nationalism. Diplomacy is nothing but a tool of statecraft that serves to MANAGE conflict. It is NEVER a solution to peace. The Gambia Government's restless efforts to bring "peace" in the Sub-region is nothing but quixotic; Yaya lacks any moral will to preach peace anywhere, whilst slaughtering his own innocent unarmed civil population- charity begins at home. On the Cassamance issue, I will opine that the only plausible resolve to the Jola insurgency is for the Senegalese Government to wage a coherent and robust counter-revolutionary war against the guerrillas, and force them to the negotiating table with a diktat for peace favourable to the integrity of the Senegalese Republic. Guerrillas never compromise their political objectives, for them war is a zero-sum game and a continuation of political struggle by other means- Mao, the grand guru of guerrilla warfare said that power comes through the barrel of a gun- he has very little faith in diplomatic maneuvering so does the MFDC. As long as there is a Jola ethno-centric brutalitarian demagogue running the Gambia Government, the Senegalese have a choice of a two-pronged strategy: The first I already highlighted above, and this should be coupled with a moral principle of promoting and instigating the "SOPI" philosophy in the Gambia so as to neutralise the Kanilai factor. ________________________________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe/subscribe or view archives of postings, go to the Gambia-L Web interface at: http://maelstrom.stjohns.edu/archives/gambia-l.html ----------------------------------------------------------------------------