Media circus replaces jazz as Syrian peace talks caravan rolls into Montreux

When 40 foreign ministers, their hangers on, and scores of UN officials descended on Switzerland’s music festival town, Montreux on Lake Geneva, at the foot of the snow-streaked Alps, members of the media massed to report on their antics.

We came to listen to speeches at the international gathering on January 22nd to launch peace negotiations between the Syrian government and expatriate opposition. Stravinsky and Miles Davis were not on the menu.

Karin, a German colleague, and I shivered under the chill mist as we trudged from the railroad station past the elegant century-old Montreux Palace hotel, where well- heeled clients were taking tea in candle-lit comfort.

While the ministers and top staff were housed there, lesser officials and journalists filled every other hotel, forcing some to stay in nearby Lausanne and commute by train.

At the media centre across the avenue, we received badges, applied for online, granting 48-hour incarceration in the Miles Davis Hall, a reminder of Lord Byron’s poem about a prisoner held at the Castle of Chillon nearby.

Directions
As soon as we had checked into our bed-and-breakfast in the old city, we went back into the cold night in search of a restaurant, stopping at the Tralala hotel to ask directions. The rustic Caveau des Vignerons, locals crowding its warm bar, welcomed us with red wine and cheese fondue.

The next morning, 24 hours before the conference, we staked claims to computer- sized places with electrical outlets and chairs at long tables in one of the two press rooms dominated by huge video screens set up to relay the speeches from the Montreux Palace. By evening, when we filed curtain-raisers based on snippets from delegations, we were 300 in number.

Overnight, Montreux was transformed into an armed camp. Although accustomed to an influx of visitors during its July and September classical music and jazz festivals, this one-day event was stressful for this small town, with a population of only 25,000.

Along with dignitaries came soldiers and police, uniformed and plainclothes, sniffer dogs, road blocks on the broad avenue along the shore of the lake, police launches patrolling its still waters, and the buzz of helicopters overhead. At the edge of the roped-off conference enclave, Syrian pro-
government demonstrators chanted, "Allah, Suriya, Bashar, bas!" ("God, Syria, president Bashar al-Assad, enough!").

We queued in the cold for 40 minutes at a security tent before gaining admission to the centre to begin the long day of end-to-end speeches rounding off with press conferences. By then we were 900 media folk, some sitting on the floor, and the wireless connection failed, forcing us to lay long cables and plug into a cat’s cradle outlet.

During briefings by UN chief Ban Ki-moon and US secretary of state John Kerry, questions were taken from media known to each man, but Syria's UN ambassador Bashar al-Jaafari fielded questions from all.

The talks between the Syrian delegations, moderated by UN envoy Lakhdar Brahimi, were
a train ride away in Geneva. After wandering around the vast UN compound, I eventually found TV teams relegated to vans and tents in the garden. The rest of us were consigned to two large briefing rooms in the wireless-friendly building housing the UN press corps.

Once again we were imprisoned behind heavy security.

After a late lunch at the only open restaurant in town – serving Ethiopian food –
we tracked down the opposition delegation at their hotel and interviewed a leading
light as he dined on lentil soup and pizza.

Drum beats
The next morning, outside the main entrance of the UN compound, an anti-government crowd beat drums and sang protest songs as the sides wrangled with Brahimi in separate rooms. After three days, they condescended to sit in the same chamber around a U-shaped table with Brahimi acting as telephone.

Television cameramen besieged members of the delegations whenever they turned up in the garden although the BBC and
al-Jazeera managed to secure private interviews with government and opposition spokespersons, separately of course.

Nevertheless, Syrian journalists from both sides sat together and chatted. Eager to be shot of the media, UN guards ordered us out before we could file, switching off the lights as we stumbled down the stairs.