Eamon Gilmore (Dún Laoghaire, Labour)

As chairman-in-office of the OSCE, I was delighted to host in Dublin recently a major conference which was entitled "Shared future: building and sustaining peace - the Northern Ireland case study". My aim in hosting this conference was to support and encourage those engaged in efforts to resolve ongoing conflicts elsewhere in the OSCE region by sharing our own successful experience of conflict resolution and peace-building in Northern Ireland.

I was pleased at the high level of participation and the deep engagement and interest in our peace process which was shown by those who attended. I am particularly grateful to our moderator, Martti Ahtisaari, and to the distinguished speakers who accepted our invitation to speak at the conference. Among many remarkable interventions in the course of the day, I would like to single out the contributions made by the First Minister of Northern Ireland, Peter Robinson, MLA, the Deputy First Minister, Martin McGuinness, MLA, and former US Senator, George Mitchell. Our objective was to increase international awareness of what helped to achieve a comprehensive and lasting agreement on this island and, without seeking in any way to present our experience as a template, to draw attention to concepts and approaches which might conceivably have relevance elsewhere. There was a high level of interest in this conference, both at home and abroad, and the feedback has been extremely positive.

Over the past few years, successive Irish Governments have been actively sharing the experience and insights gained during our peace process with groups operating in conflict situations in many different parts of the world. A small conflict resolution unit was created in my Department in 2007 to facilitate this work and to assist those striving for peaceful settlements elsewhere. In this and other ways, Ireland is making a strong national contribution to conflict resolution and mediation efforts around the world. In my concluding remarks at the recent conference, I indicated that we are willing to provide more detailed briefings on aspects of the Northern Ireland peace process, should this be helpful to those engaged in conflict resolution efforts in the OSCE area.

At the end of this month we will host a seminar along these lines for Moldovan and Transdniestrian negotiators from the so-called 5+2 talks. This seminar is being organised at the request of the two sides and the programme in Dublin will be followed by meetings in Belfast. A formal round of talks in the 5+2 framework took place in Dublin in late February and there was a further round in Vienna last month. Progress to date has been encouraging, and I hope the forthcoming seminar will build momentum for further progress in the talks when they resume in July.

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