By the Lake Luzern [ATTN: Winnemark, Eiffelland]

[Remuria]

The city of Luzern, the capital of the Government District of the County of Luzern. The somewhat long and twisted name is due to history: despite being a republic, the Free State kept some historic appelations, both for reasons of history and tourism. The city is located on the shores of a lake that bears its name, a scenic piece of Kleiner Wallis snug between the Jura in the north and the Mittelberge to the south. The river Saane flows happily into the lake and onwards to Franken, connected the river as it is to the great Elbe waterway through canal works that enable the Free State to reap many profits off river transport.

The delegations from Winnemark and Eiffelland would land at the rather small, yet still very comfortable Luzern International Airport. Their voyage would take their airplanes over the Wendmarker Alps, in all their glory and splendour. Of course, planes would be maintained to strictly civilian corridors, what with the whole war right off Wendmark's borders and whatnot.

Once landed, each delegation would be greeted by Ferdinand Niederhausen, the Wendmarker Foreign Minister, in person and be provided with land transportation to the Villmergen Palace, nowadays a luxury hotel atop a hill overlooking the river Saane. The location was chosen by the experts of the Wendmarker Chancellery for several reasons, namely that in the particular days the Winnemarker and Eiffellander delegations would be staying, there would be no other guests at the hotel simply due to the vagaries of reservations. A unique occasion!

The other reason is that despite its proximity to the city, the Palace is still a sufficiently remote and private place that would allow the security services to keep sneaky journalists away from disturbing the guests.

Spacious accomodations and luxurious suites, bankrolled by the Wendmarker taxpayer, are at the discretion of the guests. Excellent Gallian cuisine would be served to the guests (namely because native Wendmarker cuisine is not exactly known to be very refined and consists mostly of over nine thousand ways to melt cheese). Unfortunately, since Wendmark is quite a Zwinglian country, any of life's less conventional pleasures, such as drugs and courtesans, would not be found at Villmergen Palace. Whilst such things obviously do exist in Wendmark, that particular venue is eager to maintain its irreproacheable reputation in all manners “unconventional”. Not that it is expected that the highly ranked and most honourable guests would have any such thoughts.

The conference room at the disposition of the delegates, in oak and red wood, is very inviting to all sorts of discussions, from debating the future of tens of thousands of factory workers in some far away corner of Europe in a factory about to be taken over by a new company, to discussing the fates of tens of thousands of soldiers poisoned to fire at each other at any moment once given such an order.

The Wendmarker Foreign Minister would act in a coordinating role to facilitate the talks between the Winnemarker and Eiffellander representatives, but it was not in his agenda to actively intervene.


* - * - *

OOC: I have hereby invited both Winnemark and Eiffelland to skip the arrival posts and proceed to the discussions. To kind of not lengthen the process out too much.

 

[Winnemark]

[OOC: I am supportive of skipping right to the meat. In fact, I was going to suggest doing that. Good on ya, Wendmark!]

Originally, the Court of Bredenbeck had intended to send a junior diplomat to the demobilization talks with Eiffelland. But that was when they expected the discussions to be taking place in Trier, the capital of Eiffelland, with a lower counterpart in the Eiffelland government. But when the Eiffelland chancellor announced that he himself would be conducting the negotiations on behalf of his government, the Court felt it would be too insulting and in bad faith to follow through on this plan. Instead, King William had asked his son, Prince Frederick William von Burchard, to attend on behalf of the Court. Despite yesterdays discussions on the preparations for a potential war with Eiffelland, the King had asked the prince to negotiate in good faith. He wanted to keep all of his options open, and there were certainly things he hoped to get accomplished.

"I would like to begin by thanking our hosts, the Free State of Wendmark," Prince Frederick began. He noted to himself that while Wendmark wasn't an ideal host - after all, while claiming neutrality to this point it was clear they preferred the EDF to Engellex and Winnemark and the Free State had conducted a minor diplomatic row over the conflict in the recent past - getting the Eiffelland chancellor away from his capital at this point in time didn't seem like a bad idea. "The accommodations and your country are quite stunning. I hope we can accomplish some good over the next couple days." And after a short pause, he added, "I guess we should go ahead an begin."

"His Majesty King William has asked me here to negotiate on behalf of the Court of Bredenbeck and the Kingdom of Winnemark. As we begin, I would like to jump to the heart of the issue: the mutual mobilisation of both Winnemark and Eiffelland armed forces. I would like to reiterate a claim that the Court has made many, many times: our mobilisation was simply a defensive response to perceived and expected aggression from the Federation states. Our support for the Great Engellex Union in their conflict with Montelimar certainly puts us at odds with the Federation states, and we were concerned that this would result in a retaliatory strike against our Kingdom. In no ways or means was our mobilisation a signal of aggression towards Eiffelland, and we harbour no intentions - at this time - of entering into armed conflict with our Eiffelland neighbours.

"However, we are very concerned by the response of your government, Chancellor Von Seydewitz. The full mobilisation of your military along our border was exactly what we were worried about, especially because you have already shown that you will use military force. If you will use force in the Gulf of Venetian and against other neighbouring countries, what is to say you won't use it against us? Need I remind you that Winnemark has not fired a single bullet or dropped a single bomb up to this point; we are no threat. We have also observed Eiffelland military units placing mines along our border. This has to be concerned the top concern in these discussions for us. What is the intention of the mining operation? Do you intend for our mutual border to be permanently militarized? We certainly hope not. Hopefully we can come to a mutual agreement in these talks that sees to an ease in tensions and, at the very least, an ending to the mining operation."

As he finished, Prince Frederick leaned back in his chair. Not a bad opening statement, he thought to himself. He expected that he would now have the upper-hand in these negotiations.

 

[Rheinbund]

The Chancellor had made himself free to make clear that good relations with the neighbours was considered important by the Eiffellandian government. It was tradition in Eiffelland that the Minister for Defence was the commander in chief, controlled by the remainder of the government. Daniel Wolzow would do a very good job. Chancellor Von Seydewitz was convinced of that.

And should it suddenly become impossible to fly to Eiffelland, he would drive. He was an Eiffellandian after all, including Eiffellandian driving skills.

“Also I want to thank our hosts, the Free States of Wendmark, and to commend them for the excellent accommodations. The venue is perfect for discussions like this one, also because of the beautiful landscape,” the Chancellor said. He was a bit irritated by the fact that the Winnemarker Prince Friedrich Wilhelm only repeated once again the opinions of his government. He decided to show patience but also point out that the government of Winnemark never reacted on the arguments put forward by the government of Eiffelland.

“Your Royal Highness, I want to ask you something. Suppose the following happens. The Government of Danmark condemns Winnemark’s support for Engellex’s actions in Montelimar. Then Danmark begins to mobilise out of fear for an attack by Winemark because of Danmark’s condemnation of Winnemark’s support for Engellex. What would you think, and what would you do?”

The Chancellor took a sip from his coffee. Then he continued.

“Apparently the EDF-mobilisation against Solaren came a bit unexpected to several governments. Apparently the reasons for that mobilisation was not clearly understood by those same governments. Maybe we haven’t given enough explanations about what was happening and why when we were preparing the war against Solaren.
However, those explanations were given at the moment that it became clear to us that you were asking questions about it. Repeatedly. But neither the government of Engellex nor the government of Winnemark ever reacted on our arguments explaining why we started an attack against Solaren. I am wondering why.
But let me tell the differences between Solaren and Winnemark in this. Solaren seriously threatened the stability in our region. Pope Urban IV continuously provoked the international community, attacked merchant vessels in the Long Sea, shoved 4000 Nicosian citizens into concentration camps for a ransom and even killed some of those Nicosians when the money was not wired fast enough. That is state terrorism.
Furthermore, it was Solaren that started the war, even without a declaration of war. And it started the war with a chemical attack.
The Government of Winnemark has never done such things. The Governments of Polasciana, Danzig, Danmark and Venetia have never done such things. Attacking those countries would turn the attacker into a state terrorist.
This should explain why Solaren was attacked by the EDF and why we don’t intend to attack Winnemark.”

The Chancellor took another sip from his coffee. Then he continued.

“Regarding our mobilisation, I fear that I have to repeat myself. When the Government of Winnemark announced its support for Engellex, we did not react. No mobilisation, not even a comment from our government. But when Winnemark issued a full mobilisation and gave as reason fear for an EDF-attack, we started to ask ourselves some questions. It is difficult to us to understand that Eiffelland should not be afraid for your country’s mobilisation but at the same time that mobilisation is pointed against the alliance Eiffelland is a member of. Therefore, we mobilised as well.
For mining the border, let it be clear that we don’t intend to close the border. Roads will remain open and will not be mined. The same to border crossings. But the mining operation shows exactly what we are thinking. We fear for an attack by Winnemark, and want to do everything to make such an attack impossible. But we ourselves don’t have the intention to attack you, so we accept it that we can’t cross the mine fields ourselves, either. By the way, we will clearly mark where the mine fields are and fence them off. We don’t want any innocent people to step on a mine.”

 

[Winnemark]

"Well, Mr. Chancellor, it appears we have an impasse in the respective logic of our reasoning," Prince Frederick said. "I must emphasis again that the King and the Court of Bredenbeck are having a hard time believing the arguments coming from the European Defence Federation and your government regarding their military intentions. Surely any smart alliance would do everything it could to limit the support of their enemies - even if that meant taking drastic actions. This simple logic alone makes it difficult to believe that the governments of the Federation are not scheming against my beloved state. The entire world knows that the Federation is always scheming to ensure they position are the prime ruler of Europe, and that you will do whatever it takes to keep that position. I just hope the Federation doesn't become too comfortable. But continuing down this path of argument will just continue taking us in circles. I believe you will agree..."

The Prince stopped for a moment to look down and shuffle a couple of papers that were before him. "Instead, let's get to the true point that we are here - to diffuse some of the tensions currently simmer along our border. This mostly regards the military mobilisation on both sides, and the extensive mining operation of the border announced by your government. We are in a very precarious state, at the moment. I believe you would agree again... So, my question is, what do you want to see come from this meeting? Obviously, you want to see us demobilise, but what are you willing to give up to make that happen? What's your plan for peace, Chancellor?"

 

[Rheinbund]

“Your Royal Highness, what you say about the EDF is nothing else but framing. That is a discussion tactic I am not going to lower myself to, and you should not lower yourself to, either, because it does not become your royal honour. The reason for that is as follows. It blocks off all possible means to reach mutual understanding for each other’s points of view. Usually such a tactic is only used when somebody does not want to achieve mutual understanding,” Von Seydewitz said.

“My plan for peace is as follows: Mutual demobilisation. You demobilise and we demobilise. And we do so at exactly the same moment. I have to add to that, that we have alliance obligations which I am determined to follow. Currently, those alliance obligations are in Solaren and in Montelimar. No matter how despiccable you consider the EDF, Eiffelland must meet its alliance obligations. If we would not do so, it would make us an untrustworthy partner. And how much would our promises to you mean in that case?”