Yusuf Al-Azhari spent six years in solitary confinement as a political prisoner. Now he is helping to bring Somalia's warlords together. Michael Smith tells his story:

Anthony Duigan from Johannesburg gives his impressions of a conference that aimed to bring healing in South Africa.

Troubled by the Irish question, English doctor John Lester feels the need for a clinical examination of his own attitudes:

In 1987 two military coups led by ethnic Fijians overthrew Fiji's elected government and governing councils. Three years later, no one would claim things are back to normal, but changes are happening. In a newspaper message on 18 October - the Hindu celebration of Diwali - the Prime Minister of the interim government, Ratu Sir Kamisese Mara, wrote of the need for harmony, tolerance and respect between ethnic Fijians and the Indians, who make up 46 per cent of the population. `Let us rededicate ourselves to promoting and facilitating national unity and strengthening the bonds of nationhood.

Western media images of Muslims as threatening only help to further reinforce Islamic rejection of the West.

Michael Brown reports on a month sent in a conference centre half way up a Swiss mountain, where people from many countries gathered to `free the forces of change'.

We passed each other every morning. She went along Fulda's Kunzeller Street to the Jewish school. I went down Edelzeller Street to the town school. Where the two streets crossed, we met. But I didn't even know her name.

With a bullet in his arm, he zigzagged away, missing by inches the car that was blocking the road.

These days I often find myself in Shahibag, which now houses the papers, personal effects and photos of Vallabhbhai Patel, whose biography I am writing. Patel and Jawaharlal Nehru together administered India between Independence in 1947 and December 1950, when Patel died. Nehru was Prime Minister and Patel was styled Deputy Prime Minister, but they shared power equally and jointly.

Professor Rieben, who is Director of the Centre for European Research in Lausanne, writes that after visiting Caux, `I could not forget what Europe owed to the dialogue and cooperation which developed during the decisive post-war years between Frank Buchman on the one hand and Konrad Adenauer and Robert Schuman on the other.'