The Swiss Foreign Ministry have announced that they consider the elected officials of Hamas as partners.
Sisyphos has posted the announcement, which at the time of this post, is only available in French. But here’s the English translation, courtesy of Google.
As Sisyphos notes:
[Swiss Foreign Minister Micheline Calmy-Rey] was the one who laid down flowers on Arafat’s grave, an act which was heavily criticized in Switzerland at the time. Socialist Calmy-Rey is also the one who gave birth to the “Geneva initiative”, a project which was supposed to promote peace in that region but which none of the relvant actors in the Middle East ever took seriously.
I would add something else. Switzerland has long served as a financial and diplomatic base for Hamas.
Update: There is something very “Helen Clarky” about Micheline Calmy-Rey.
