The government should look at ways of opening communication channels with groups like al Qaeda and the Taliban if it wants a long-term political solution as well as a security solution, a former senior aide to Tony Blair says.

Jonathan Powell, who served as Blair’s chief of staff between 1995 and 2007, told the Guardian newspaper that such a policy helped secure a peace deal in Northern Ireland.

He was quoted as saying that a secret back channel between the British government and the IRA, first opened in the 1970s, was one of the key factors that contributed to a peace deal three decades later.

“It’s very difficult for democratic governments to do - talk to a terrorist movement that’s killing your people,” he was reported as saying.

“[But] if I was in government now I would want to have been talking to Hamas, I would be wanting to communicate with the Taliban; and I would want to find a channel to al
Qaeda.”

The Foreign Office said it was “inconceivable” that it would ever seek to reach a mutually acceptable accommodation with al Qaeda, and has called on disaffected Afghans to renounce violence.

It has also told Hamas “dialogue is impossible so long as one party is dedicated to violence and the destruction of the other”.

Can peace be achieved without dialogue, and if not, at what point do you begin talking?

Silda Wall Spitzer stood beside her husband, New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer, as he resigned on Wednesday amid a scandal over a $1,000-an-hour prostitute. The mother of the governor’s three daughters also stood by her husband’s side at a news conference on Monday where he admitted he had violated his obligations to his family and his “sense of right and wrong.”

The public reaction to Mrs. Wall Spitzer’s stance to “stand by her man” has been mixed at best, New York Magazines notes . Political blog from N. Dakota, “Say Anything” , said it would have paid to see Silda Spitzer punch her husband on the podium.

Others were not as generous. “What’s more disgusting than a lyin’ no good, cheatin, hypocritical, political man? Their wives that stand by looking dumbfounded as their unfaithful husbands apologize to the public. Do these women have no pride?” wrote New York City Moms blog. Dr. Laura went so far as to blame Mrs. Wall Spitzer for the scandal.

She’s not the first wife to stand silently by her husband as he apologizes or confesses. Dina Matos McGreevey wrote a book called “Silent Partner ” about her life with her ex-husband, the former governor of New Jersey, who resigned after announcing he was a homosexual.

What are your views? Can we or should we read much into the private decisions of a wife of a public figure?