"I wouldn't rule out conversations with the devil if it could help victims out of the depths of hell," Egeland told Aftenposten.no.
Egeland, who helped broker Middle East peace pacts and most recently was the UN's foreign aid coordinator, was responding to a Reuters article about the possibility of negotiating with terrorist groups.
In the article, Egeland won support for his views from former Anglican church envoy and hostage negotiator Terry Waite, who noted that "no insurgency or terrorism has been defeated by warfare or violence."
Waite said in a debate on BBC World television that there are "some rational players" in al-Qaida but it also attracts the psychotic. "We need to seek an entry point," said Waite, himself a captive in Lebanon from 1987 to 1991.
Egeland, who now heads a foreign policy think tank in Oslo (Norsk Utenrikspolitish Institutt, NUPI), told Aftenposten.no that he thinks it's wrong to draw up lists of terrorist organizations and demonize them.
"It's a strength that Norway hasn't made a list over terrorist organizations like the US and the EU have done," Egeland said. "It's completely wrong, because then you get into a situation where you take away the possibility to stop war and terror through negotiations."
Egeland noted that he's spoken for years with some of the "worst guerilla leaders and extremists in the world, and if there one thing I've learned, it's not to rule out the possibility for conversations with anyone."
He conceded, though, that it's probably impossible to deal with al-Qaida at present. "This is a narrow terror network without a central structure," Egeland said. "We have no channels to go through and no serious opponent to contact."
He also said there's nothing to negotiate at the moment because the goal would be for al-Qaida to halt terrorist actions, which they haven't considered doing.
