If the subject wasn’t so serious, one might call it a speed-date. Five hours, that is the amount of time the International Conference on Afghanistan can spend next Tuesday to sort out a wide array of issues related to “a comprehensive approach in a regional context”, to quote the motto of the meeting. According to the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the participants of the UN conference will begin their work at 10:45; have one working session of about 1,5 hours and a longer session (3,5 hours) in the afternoon. In between, there will be a one-hour lunch, which no doubt will also be used to iron out this or that wrinkle in the Final Declaration, to be presented at 1800 hrs. However, experts say negotiations on the declaration have already been conducted in the past few days, will continue over the weekend, and it may well be that by Tuesday morning, there will be few wrinkles left…
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