"You don’t make peace with your friends, but with your enemies," said Raymond Johansen, state secretary in Norway’s Foreign Ministry and deputy foreign minister, on Wednesday.
Johansen told the website for newspaper Dagsavisen Wednesday afternoon that Afghan President Hamid Karzai has also called for reconciliation among the various groups in Afghanistan. That would include Osama bin Laden's followers.
"We support that," Johansen said. "Engagement and dialogue have a lot going for them." He also stressed that "negotiations are not the same as weakness."
Johansen's remarks come in the wake of a visit by Swiss Foreign Minister Micheline Calmy-Rey to Iran, and her call for dialogue with Osama bin Laden. She's the first foreign minister of a democratic country who has promoted dialogue with bin Laden, saying Switzerland has no other alternatives.
"We have no military forces, we don’t have anything other than the power of the word to influence other states or to influence decisions in a multilateral setting," she said Tuesday.
Johansen, who also was the first high-ranking Western official to meet with Hamas leaders last year, didn’t reject her call. He noted, though, that he has no illusions that bin Laden would sit down for negotiations.
"I don't think Osama bin Laden or the forces around al-Qaida want dialogue," Johansen said. "They prefer rather to take the lives of infidels."
