OSTERVALE — Delegations from 14 nations concluded five days of talks at the Ostervale Conference on Mutual Understanding on Friday without reaching agreement on any item on the agenda, and issued a joint request for an additional 90 days in which to continue not agreeing.
“We have made significant progress toward identifying the full extent of our disagreement,” said the conference chair, Ambassador Liesl Marangoni-Hart. “In earlier rounds, we disagreed on perhaps 30 percent of the issues before us. Today we can say with confidence that we disagree on all of them, including several we have not yet raised.”
The talks, held in the main ballroom of the Hôtel Marchmont, were delayed for the first two days by a dispute over the seating chart. Organizers resolved it on Wednesday by replacing the rectangular table with a round one so that no delegation would sit at the head, which led to a second dispute over which part of a circle is the head. Coffee service was rated “adequate” by nine delegations, “acceptable” by three, and “a provocation” by a delegation from the north, which brought its own.
The conference’s final communiqué, a 42-page document, consists entirely of bracketed text, which in diplomatic drafting indicates language that has not been agreed. When delegations could not agree on the placement of the brackets, a second set of brackets was placed around the first, and by Thursday evening the only unbracketed text in the document was the page numbers, which two delegations have since bracketed. The request for 90 additional days of talks was adopted by consensus shortly before midnight Friday, and then placed in brackets by the same consensus, leaving the delegations formally in disagreement over whether they had agreed to disagree. Negotiators worked through the night to resolve the matter and were able, by dawn, to disagree on that as well.
The Department of Agricultural Common Sense sent an observer to the talks, for reasons the department did not explain. Ron Gilchrist, the department’s senior spokesperson, said in a statement that the department “has always supported a strong and vibrant agricultural sector.” Asked about the outcome of the conference, Gilchrist said the department “has long believed in fields,” and declined to comment further.
A delegation from a neighboring country walked out of Thursday’s afternoon session in protest, then returned 20 minutes later, saying it had been unable to agree with itself on where to go.
Delegates said they would reconvene in the spring at a location to be disputed.
The conference’s single point of consensus came on Tuesday, when all 14 delegations agreed that the ice machine on the hotel’s third floor was broken. Marangoni-Hart described it as “a genuinely unifying moment.”
“Unfortunately, two delegations have since reported that it works,” she said.