It happens between nations not having diplomatic relations in that cae they talk through 3rd country in some neurtral venue.

In international relations, there is such a concept called " back channel diplomacy ". It simply connotes the existence of a mechanism that is essentially supplementary to the formal existing institutions such as the Ministry of External Affairs headed by the External Afairs Minister and his Foreign Secretary, and a host of other officials, who, essentially are employees of the formal institution. Back channel diplomacy, on the other hand, is more of an informal arrangement whose purpose is to work out the modalities or to prepare the ground work and make the circumstances appropriate for the operations of formal diplomatic channels. Before the formal establishment of Indo-Israeli consulates, we witnessed plenty of back channel diplomacy which was primarily designed to test the preparedness od our govt. to establish diplomatic relations with Israel and the degree to which they were prepared to go in this direction. Likewise, there are some countries in the world, notably neutral count ...more

Secret talks