and done!

all wrapped up...

rushing

things moving quickly, and people aren't following everything

UN seem to be in control though

lebanon

still haven't worked out how to pay attention to the debate and have internal discussions

planning

no one's planning for what to do if agreement can't be reached on anything, or on any bit of text

engagement

still not got everyone's attention, even now

bit ragged now

getting my words coming back verbatim, which means someone will notice i've used the same phrases over and again...

capital contact

now all done - briefly

still working through

not much time for check-back and final revisions

now i'm getting into the 'let's agree something, anything' mode

Award rumours

Rumours suggest that
Best negotiator in each basket: Tom, Daniele, Lesley
Best dressed: Nat
Worst dressed: Dom
Most improved: Kuwait
Most surprising delegate: Georgina
Most diplomatic: Matthew Furnis
Most OTT: Lebanon, threat of withdrawing all support
Most lazy negotiator:
Best participating group: UN/Egypt
Best proposal: SEED

Awards

Three of the chair group are compiling a list of their awards for this conference.

Categories include:
Best negotiator
Best and worst dressed
Most diplomatic
Most lazy negotiator

More details soon.

still getting notes

about agreements. will keep them hanging

Chair

Very much stronger, pushing for agreement, hurrying along, much more pacey now.

fingered!

i sense my popularity has plumbed new depths...

clearly, people hadn't expected this to happen

working through text

so won't be able to post much now

UMC on updating

finally getting everyone together to update on basket progress

general conclusions

everyone's keen to be done with this, so groups are MSN'g me for clearance

water

still trying to close down decisions, instead of setting up future negotiations

Tablet

Note that Fran is using stylus on tablet (but still in laptop mode) and PA have gone for full screen-down tablet mode.

speaking times

for the first time, I've thought again about the discussion about speaking times in the preliminary game - maybe two people have run out of time in the last 2.5 days...

Seems very irrelevant right now.

websites

Can see two groups looking up BBC News and wikipedia - suspect that they have been heavily used sources over the 3 days

Oil

drifts in an out of the negotiation, despite everyone having a clear interest in it (unlike Palestine).

photos

clearly not everyone is totally comfortable with the cameras, so that's not fully normalised as part of the experience...

TK and CY

still pushing bilateral water deals, despite my 'no'es

Saudi made just this point

preamble

somewhat worrying MSN discussion about 'what is a preamble?'

the conclusion sessions are going to be fun...

Sudan

makes a good point about flexible agreements

restart

obviously, the main focus has been collecting essays from Maxine. Also the main topic of chat around the room right now.

lunch

quiet again today and those around are talking about football, not the Middle East

water

again slowed by looking at specific cases, rather than building general principles. Saudi is making just this point

another round of MSNing my agreement

need to prepare for the final decision, otherwise it'll be meaningless

my role

is changing, from observer, to participant. fairly solid stream of queries today

parallel sessions again

all three baskets working in different rooms right now

Arran is pushing his embassy idea again

msn

rather silly episode, where i had to reply to all groups agreeing to the FTA. not the best way to do things.

language

i know my posts haven't been great, but the quality of English in the wiki is not good.

rapporteur

LEbanon is controlling this debate, which makes sense as they are the rapporteur.

the kuwaiti rapporteur has disappeared for Hum, so not sure if they'll be any text to agree on later...

Computers

Just counting computers on desks
Cyprus: 2 on desk
Egypt: 1 on desk, 1 behind
Iran: 2 on desk
Iraq: 2 on desk
Israel: 2 on desk
Jordan: 1 on desk
Kuwait: 3 on desk
Lebanon: 2 on desk
Libya: 2 on desk
PA: 2 on desk
Saudi Arabia: 1 on desk, 1 behind (not currently used)
Sudan: 1 on desk
Syria: 1 on desk
Turkey: 1 on desk

UN: 4 on desk
Simon: 1
Steve: 1

Total: 31 computers

There are currently these people in the room:
14 basket leaders
2 other participants
4 UN Group
Simon
Steve
Total: 22 people

We have nearly 1.5 computers per person at the moment.

Loud noises from next door.

MSN negotiations

been contacted by Iran's Hum Basket, whose train was cancelled - he's MSNing his negotiations from home.

maybe this could be next year's game - all remote, no personal contact at all...

morning break

still no urgency, and still a sense of confusion about how to tackle things.

eco-env have been meeting informally, so will be interesting to see how they progress

jordan

falls into a bear-trap - don't think they were paying too much attention...

and don't know their positions either.

clearly not much use of the position papers

israel-bashing

in full swing. to no effect. perhaps Israel's reticence is a tactic. it's working for now, assuming they keep their nerve.

egypt

is framing things in a somewhat aggressive manner - still pushing on Israel making concessions, when they're not going to.

msn

sudan seem to be stirring on terrorism

still no strong sense of urgency

distracted by point-scoing. can also hear security group chatting next door (i.e. not sounds of focused debate)

back to slanging

which is odd

libya

their humanitarian delegate is ill, but wants to stay (for their portfolio), but clearly doesn't trust their group...

msn

still getting queries on specific points from groups, including a lot of bilateral stuff, which i've universally been knocking on the head for everyone.

israel

not being very clear or loud, and I have the impression that this is weakening their influence in the debate.

0920, and now 30 students

lebanon

just reading from my email, suggesting that they've not been able to use it as a basis for developing a flexible negotiating base.

Egypt

leading debate in the humanitarian basket as always.

time management

0905 and only 20 people here. UN has pressed on, though.

final day

sent off another slew of emails last night, all much more focused than on Monday, with the existence of text

close

people are tired, but sense of determination to get agreements on various fronts.

terrorism

only really now that we're having this discussion, and lots of tip-toeing around definitions.

sophistry

people seem to be getting a bit of a handle on agreeing to things that don't mean what other people think they mean. however, they're still too straight.

Lebanon

Has left the room, during a debate which they were active.

Israel-Palestine

again, lots of effort being expended on solving Palestine, despite IS veto.

embassies

odd discussion. Arran is very driven to get something that he's suggested agreed. the objections are not the obvious ones about state recognition and normalisation, but about physical security.

jargon

our first piece of jargon: "can you go blue on this?" (Arran)

the socialisation continues

Sympodium

Have noticed that room 3 are using the sympodium system, to draw diagrams which are projected onto the walls. They have also asked for whiteboard markers to write on the walls.

Sympodium

Notice that room 3 are drawing on the sympodium system, projected onto the screen. They have also just asked for whiteboard markers to write on the walls.

fragmentation

getting quite broken up now, with various meetings of varying statuses.

good for productivity, bad for coordination

incredulity

strange how often students are shocked at colleague's positions, when they are so well-known...

confusion

still lots of confusion over what they can do and what status what text has.

also not too clear about consensus

other sessions are informal

so UN not involved.

however, don't seem to be too concerned about ensuring they know what's happening, which might cause problems later

new dynamic

the emergent dynamic now is that of focus on the negitations and a subsequent desire to complete things. the pay-off of parallel sessions is lack of coordination between baskets, so that final session tomorrow will be chaotic.

parallel sessions

currenlty three seperate neogitations going on in three rooms. pressure is starting to build.

humanitarian basket is tying down commitments to aid and a clear agenda for tomorrow, all under EG direction.

econ basket is drafting text.

security continue to work through their drafts

ulearn

even less activity and logging-on than yesterday.

socialisation

Steve already noted it today, but more people talking about 'my country' and defending positions they don't necessarily hold in real life.

real-life/wiki

a good example of how people are focused on the computers and not on what people are saying.

and how the wiki is used.

Wiki for MECCA text

Nice use of Wiki for discussing the MECCA principles, colour coded YES NO MAYBE for each countries' views.

realisation

that talks about talks is not the same as talks...

only took 12 hours...

MECCA

frustration by Iran over vacillating states. highlights problem of lack of detail

engagement

much more engagement, now there's text to discuss

wiki text

a fair bit has gone up over lunch, but still vague and general

Iran

pushes the multilateral agenda (albeit their multilateral agenda)

Lebanon

pitches in with landmines again, rather than taking any kind of high ground

PA

asking for an apology for the attack this morning in the West Bank from Israel

PA don't really know how they're playing this one, beyond asking for the apology.

Gabriel notes he's not in a position to apologise.

and the moment passes...

lunch

quite a few people hanging around today, unlike yesterday, where it was deserted.

further evidence of more focus

low-scale mayhem

as the network crashes...

much restarting of connections

wiki

being used in a different way from that forseen, with use of threads prior to putting text in main page.

attitude shift?

Both Steve and I have noticed that people are more focused today on finding agreement, rather scoring points. this appears to be a self-generated thing, since I hadn't given such guidance last night.

However, still fairly minimal stuff, so will have to see how much they can do

security negotiation

interesting stuff

lot of unhappiness about yesterday and states sounding off.

outline agreement on agenda and willingness to explore options.

limited number of relevant actors - IS, IN, EG, SY - others pretty quiet and passive.

also discussed different caucus options

Turkey

is chairing an informal meeting after the break

chairing

The UN chairing as been a bit more ragged this morning - Felicity has been looking to Heidi for guidance and involvement.

Other chairs have been working to try and keep other baskets moving forward too, via MSN.

wiki

is getting much use - still confusion about where to put text.

Consensus

Interesting discussion on the nature of consensus, and what it means for this debate. More interesting that it's taken till Tuesday morning to get this understood - it's a fairly fundamental point I would have thought.

caution

having MSN'd UN about getting people to be more open in negotiations.

also suggested to RO that UN shoudl try to get agreement on opening future negotiations, not cloding them.

Chair MSN

Note that Heidi is very active on MSN, I suspect she's a strong underlying influence in these discussions.

requests

getting lots of queries about whether states can do this or that. maybe why people are still cautious

dynamics

strange mix here. On one hand, deep ideological splits on Israel-Arab lines, which kills off lots of ideas. On the other, recognition of common problems (here, water), leading to everyone pitching in together. no on seems to have a problem with this dissonance. yet.

Caucus

another MC about trade, with some progress, but people seem a bit stunned right now

agenda

this morning we do have an agenda, after Lebanon convened a meeting last night.

so discussion is more directed, but still not a sense of strong engagement

Late start

by me, unfortunately.

although also clear that negotiations only kicked off at 9.15, with one state not represented at all.

even now, at 9.25, a good dozen people are missing.

Closure

15 mins after session formally closed, and about half the participants remain in the room. Debreifing from Simon for chair group

Tom

Have learnt that watching Tom's (Egypt) face provides interesting television

close of play

numbers

down to 40 students, out of 49.

Iran education proposal

Note that Turkey are looking at world literacy rates online following Iran's proposal to 'spearhead a plan' to raise education standards based on their own 'fantastic' education system - suspect their giggles were due to Iran having a relatively low position in these rates

suspiciousness

yet another problem - the groups don't trust each other. In part, this is due to groups only raising specific issues, rather than more generic points.

sense of marking time now

no great progress since the break - the various ideas get shot down, the groups just try to score points off each other.

UN Researcher

No requests yet to UN researcher that I'm aware of.

Facebook

Chair wiki member (sorry, don't know her name, but not Heidi) is currently using facebook and doesn't seem to be paying any attention to the debate.

UN

as in the preliminary game, the UN is very hands-off ("it's not for us to find solutions"), which makes this negotiation even harder.

nothing is anyone's problem: everything is everyone else's problem...

Kurds

Iraq still not clear about position on Kurds - giving Turkey a hard time about Kurdish rights, but have domestic position of no autonomy.

humanitarian

small group discussion starting to get somewhere, but no Saudis and no time.

also worth noting a cluster of people in 03AC03, who've clearly given up for the day...

procedure

UN just made a hash of re-jigging the schedule, partly because they were too accomodating, partly because they weren't clear enough.

into UMC

most people don't seem to know what's what

EY MC on aid

strangely precise negotiation on aid - not workable.

but good work by Egypt in leading this.

Just seen a Jordanian playing some action game...

caution

part of the problem seems to be that groups think they have to get national capital approval for entering all discussions. I've MSN'd to rectify this.

UMC on aid

another odd caucus - no obvious activity on the topic of aid. TK and CY have an understanding about their status, hence their reluctance to discuss the occupation.

IS not getting too involved with Lucie as representative. Saudis also not working the room at all.

cyprus-bashing

not sure what the agenda is behind giving Cyprus a hard time about refugees. although they're not helping themselves very much

aid plan

good idea, but I think that some countries will not be happy about loosing any influence associated with pooling aid (e.g. Saudis, Libya).

also good for parking issue, but question of what else to discuss.

at which point Iran raises Cyprus occupation...

Iran

one of the Iranians just asked to become my friend on Facebook...

caucus

turned into a moderated caucus, well-controlled by Tom (Egypt)

egypt

immediate suggestion of a UMC, suggesting no one really talked over lunch...

accepted by almost everyone

lunchtime feedback

those i talked to seem happy with the progress so far. no one looks too stressed yet.

norman jackson (Sceptre) dropped by to say that some technical feedback on the room would be very helpful.

lunchtime

Steve and I have been photgraphing desks, to gather evidence of who's doing what and how. lots of interesting stuff...

water aid

just capturing some good footage following the break for lunch regarding the water aid issue raised by Cyprus.

lunch

relief more than anything else.

one hour discussion

and what is there to show for it? not much, if that.

Lebanon is googling all its points (news sources & wikipedia)

airspace

vetoes seem rather out of hand, especially since the principle exists in practice already

Lebanon

more focused on their internal debate, than listening to the room.

UN

just said they wouldn't help in any agreement, which sends out an odd signal to the delegates

Lebanon

now Arran is coaching Sarah-Grace. would be simpler to swap roles...

point-scoring

not sure where this can lead to - UN could provide more direction

Turkey

Is looking at the Turkey Dept of Foreign affairs website

today

looks like a 'get things off our chests' kind of day.

pushing around of responsibility (egypt just said Israel should propose a text)

attention wandering

people starting to drift away now. also several people have simply left the room in the last break.

it's going to be hard to get text agreed, given the general lethargy and the precedent set by the security basket. They'll struggle to put something together in the time allocated.

Egypt lost from MSN

Egypt has become disconnected from MSN, which is relevant as they are a current speaker.

egypt-bashing

i sense a theme emerging - this time Egypt is getting it in the neck because they were first to put their heads above the wall. still not productive

refugees

so again we've fallen into the Palestinian issue, when there are clearly more general issues arising about refugees.

humanitarian

again, no one's got any points to raise

Solitaire

Just noticed that one of the Syrian delegates is playing Solitaire on their PC

military transparency

dangerous stuff for the Israelis to suggest. looks like syria might save them.

everyone's getting to grips with saying things that they can't stick to in practice.

scope

confusion about what they can discuss and agree to, since consensus-based.

Cyprus

stymies Iran's idea, as they are EU members, so can't seperate out 'their' interests from 'others'.

more general problem that hard to know if you can agree to something without seeing detail

detail

finally Iran explain their idea - so i'm glad i told them that they'd need this in their position paper

caucus

didn't seem to resolve issues - Saudis and Iranians didn't talk to each other. Kuwait was active

lebanon

finally mention wiki as precondition for agreement.

Saudis

making a go of their ideas, but need to articulate them more clearly.

Laptops

Just noting that there are 38 active laptops in the room, including those that were provided, Simon's and Steve's. Very nearly 1 per person.

landmines

why don't Israel agree to landmines being bad, so getting Lebanon off the topic?

Un moving too quickly

nonta suggested agreeing to permanent cte on something, but not clear on what and no real discussion. iran raising just this point and trying to push MECCA again.

negotiations

hard to know what's what, since i think there are bits of text floating around, informing discussion, but discussion is a bit vague and confused.

jordan finally speaks

good intervention as a balancer.

still not heard from Iraq or Libya. Sudan only spoke a couple of times.

debate

everyone's trying to be constructive, but in individual directions. still looking for coordination, which might come from this unmod'd caucus

israel recognition

israel just asked for everyone to recognise them as a legitimate, sovereign state...

Heidi points out UN charter implies this.

Iran

floats MECCA idea - let's see if they fill out details

issue separation

getting a bit confused over what's being discussed (occupied territories and nuclear)

MSN

obviously loads going on in MSN.

possible problem of people not paying attention to real conversation

MSN links

Israel just sent a link via MSN - nice use. Wasn't actually listening enough to know what the link was!

caucus

might have cleared air, but PA still baiting.

caucus

gabriel held court and declaimed most the time. CY and TK came up with a good idea about a solution. no one wanted to talk with Dom

Israel

Picking up some great footage of Israel - and a big group of people, sound is a bit indistinct, but the Israel protests can be clearly heard

unmoderated caucus

israel as focus - not apparently listening to Gabriel, but more berating him

The blog

The blog's a great idea, just wondered if it was planned in advance or just seemed like a good idea at the time

israel is clear on the situation

speech preparation

Turkey is reading a speech from screen which they have jointly prepared in Word.

circles

are what we're going round right now. wonder how long israel-bashing will go on.

RoP

Repeated explanation of RoP - will it sink in or is the chair being over-zealous in reinforcing these?

israel

is doing alright, since they realise there's not much the others can do to them

key problem (part 2)

how do you order events? who goes first?

again, this needn't be a problem, if they discussing more general principles.

preparation

if you look at the CSCE final act, then you'll see it's not framed at the kind of level we're working at here. if it remains bilateral, then they won't agree anything.

Multitasking

Am intruiged by the amount of multitasking taking place here, all of the computers seem to be active, and there seems to be a lot of MSN use - unsure if related or personal. At least one person seems to be working on an essay.

key problem

how do you ensure compliance of things agreed here? Lebanon can't control Hezbollah, so israel is perfectly right to be wary of making commitments.

positions/interests

starting to move to the latter, although it's a slow process. now talking about terrorism in general.

no-one's got into the idea of vague language as a way of side-stepping these issues.

Nonta more forceful about RoP

hezbollah as focus

fine, but the other participants could get those involved past this.

lebanon-israel

still going - the UN reaffirms the RoP, but not very forceably.

I think the Un will not have a smooth ride in this basket

Lebanon is not very clear about who's doing what - Daniela's coordinating Arran

time

still people arriving

constructiveness

can anyone bring up a constructive agenda, otherwise we'll just have a discussion about how bad everyone else is.

getting beyond positions

maybe re-reading the CSCE document would help.

Israel's doing a good job of not rising to the bait of Lebanon, although that's not doing to last much more.

the Un could progress this, although without other topics, we'll drift back to it.

agenda

no one's really worked out that being first with their agenda is a big plus. even if Lebanon is picking in with cluster bombs and Shebaa, neither of which is really the kind of point that would be raised in this kind of forum

saudi

takes opportunity to re-float their plan and is instantly attacked by Israel. I think we might be working from first principles. although PA has just raised Annapolis

security

and no one's prepared how to get this started

rapporteurs

easily enough agreed - slightly surprising choices

Principles Art 6 (frontiers)

Saudi's compromise is a way out of the impasse over who's occupying whom: but it still has issues of what frontiers we are talking about, since not all current frontiers are recognised.

Welcome

As you can see, this was set up rather late in the day.

the idea is to have a site that reflects my observations as we go through the main simulation.