Westminster House Talks
Shortly after the election victory, Shaheed and Saeed engineered the Westminster House process, through which they pardoned and released a number of high profile dissidents who were languishing in jail or facing politically motivated prosecutions. These were steps towards a multiparty dialogue process supervised by the British Government designed to speed up the stalled constitutional reforms. However, both Gayoom and Yameen, who feared that British mediation would mean that the Gayoom might not be able to run for a seventh term in office, derailed the process.
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Famous quotes containing the words house and/or talks:
“Go out of the house to see the moon, and ‘t is mere tinsel; it will not please as when its light shines upon your necessary journey. The beauty that shimmers in the yellow afternoons of October, who could ever clutch it? Go forth to find it, and it is gone: ‘t is only a mirage as you look from the windows of diligence.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“There are few ironclad rules of diplomacy but to one there is no exception. When an official reports that talks were useful, it can safely be concluded that nothing was accomplished.”
—John Kenneth Galbraith (b. 1908)