Michael Balcomb, chairman of UPF for Europe and the Middle East, has stated that the way to peace is hard to hear, but I am going to say it now, we have to love the enemy, or the enemy’s children or the opponent more than ourselves, a long as any government puts its own national interest first… you may think this is the way to ruin but it is not, it is actually the way to peace.
He spoke at the conference “Balkan Leadership Conference” with the theme: “Peace, stability and demographic transition in the Western Balkans”, organized by the Universal Peace Federation in cooperation with the Government of Kosovo.
“We like to think that war and conflicts in Europe is a thing of the past, it’s barbaric, it’s prehistoric and it would never happen here again, but we are wrong, we have seen we are wrong, and we might ask why is that the case, what is it within human nature, within the human heart that so easily leads again and again to violence and division. 16 years ago the second secretary general of the United Nations asked this question almost in despair and he said that I see no hope unless there is a spiritual revolution. Hamès Gold was not a religious leader, not an imam, not a pope, and we are talking here about a confessional reformation, we are not talking about the ascendance of one faith or another, but rather the deepest spiritual question within each one of us what is it that again and again divides us from not only our neighbors but our brothers”, he said.
And while he spoke about the disagreements in the Western Balkans, he said that European values should be taken.
“We have heard under the surface, a feeling that somebody else is blocking peace, those people in that another other country, or from other political party that is not my own, or a different generation or a different gender, but I believe and I challenge you that the task of peace is not limited to the prime minister and his administration who have to leave, it is a question that is actually challenging myself, and what is the key, the key is very hard indeed to hear, but I am going to say it now, we have to love the enemy, or the enemy’s children or the opponent more than ourselves, a long as any government puts its own national interest first… you may think this is the way to ruin but it is not, it is actually the way to peace”, he said.
