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RAYMOND HINNEBUSCH AND ANOUSHIRAVAN EHTESHAMI, EDS., The Foreign Policies of Middle East States (Boulder, Colo./London: Lynne Rienner, 2002). Pp. 389. $59.95 cloth. $23.50 paper

Six cases of Track II diplomacy from the Middle East are analyzed. The Oslo talks, which produced the 1993 Declaration of Principles between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization, are given the most attention, reflecting their status as “the mother of all Track II talks” (p. 54). Emerging from the unproductive Track I Washington negotiations, the Oslo talks were “hard” from the outset, meaning they were being closely directed by top political actors. The authors provide a useful summary of the secretive high politics surrounding Oslo: who would report to whom, when, and under what circumstances. The same framework (political environment, participants, sponsors, mentors, and leaders) is applied to five other cases: Israeli–Palestinian talks sponsored by the American Academy of Arts and Sciences; Project “Charlie” talks between Palestinians and Israeli settlers in the West Bank; unofficial Israeli–Syrian talks that ultimately led to Track I negotiations; the multilateral Arms Control and Regional Security talks sponsored by several organizations (full disclosure: the reviewer played a small role in ACRS); and the Stockholm talks, often misnamed the “Abu Mazin-Beilin agreement.” The most interesting discussion concerns the Stockholm talks. The agreement hammered out there in the fall of 1995 significantly shaped all serious negotiations thereafter, including the Clinton framework of December 2000, the Taba negotiations of January 2001, and the unofficial 2003 Geneva accord. The approach to resolving the Israeli–Palestinian conflict agreed to at the Track II Stockholm talks remains the basis for any viable two-state solution to the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. The authors conclude that Track II talks can be a useful tool in conflict resolution, but only if done in an appropriate context and in a politically astute manner. Track II talks cannot succeed if the political environment is not conducive to progress. For example, the Oslo talks were made possible by the far-reaching changes in the Middle East as a result of the 1990– 91 Iraq war and the end of the Cold War. The authors provide analysis as well of the sorts of approaches that enhance the ability of Track II talks to succeed, including the types of participants to include, the importance of informality and secrecy, avoidance of tough issues at the outset, and so on. Track II talks, like official negotiations, can sometime break down in acrimony, as happened with the ACRS talks. The book exudes a sense of being about a different place and time, when Middle East peace was a real possibility. The authors seem to sense this because they frame their discussion more broadly, as potentially applicable to other conflicts in other regions. The book is recommended both for people interested in a well-informed history of the spate of Track II talks on Middle East peace in the 1990s and for practitioners seeking guidance on undertaking similar unofficial talks between conflicting parties anywhere in the world.