"We're a democracy, yes."

"A whole-planetary democracy?"

"The colony planets are all whole-planetary democracies; here we have a federalist system where nations are self-governing and elect representatives to a planet-wide council."

"You're not concerned about eventual conflict between this planet and the colonies, nor about misjudging someone you grant warp to?"

"We've given a lot of thought to reducing the risk of both. The Federation seems to do very well at managing interspecies relations without conflicts arising, I'm sure we have much to learn from you."

"We manage it significantly by only taking responsibility for species that meet our membership requirements."

"That makes sense! I could envision us doing something similar, with different requirements."

"What do you have in mind?"

"Amentan colony planets have all signed on to treaties on trade, accountability for conduct towards other species, extradition, law enforcement, and immigration."

"I'd be interested to hear details."

He can talk details! Amentans have a slightly different-than-Federation definition of war crimes, and closing non-swap immigration because your planet is going to be full soon is a perfectly legitimate thing to do, but the rest is all very standard! You'd think they'd been reading Federation treaties or something.

"Some of that sounds very familiar. Did Isabella T'Mir provide copies of Federation documents?"

"We've learned a great deal about you, yes. We're not interested in membership but we have many values and concerns in common."

"With most of our allies we have extradition arrangements."

"We'd be willing to discuss something like that going forward."

"But you want Isabella T'Mir grandfathered in?"

"Yes. And we might be reluctant in general to extradite for crimes which aren't crimes here - just as I imagine the Federation has an arrangement so as not to hand over, say, a Ferengi woman wanted for owning property or a Bajoran refugee wanted for resisting the occupation -"

"We've never had the Bajoran problem, thank goodness - the Ferengi will actually just, ah, sell us escaped women, on the handful of occasions it's come up -"

He makes a face. "Well. I suppose that's better than the alternative."

"Yes. It's a formality, they have normal Federation guest or citizenship status as they prefer after that."

"Yes, I assumed as much. They won't, ah, sell you all of them?"

"It's never been seriously proposed, and we'd have some misgivings about effectively genociding the species even if it were feasible."

Nod. "We'd have an uphill battle politically to sell a treaty extraditing people for conduct we consider heroic, but if it's a priority of the Federation I imagine it could be accomplished with protection for our T'Mir and other things for Amentans to be excited about."

"Is there a reason you're so protective of her, since she didn't give you warp?"

"It's two things, really - when we learned about her we offered her asylum, and it's important to us to keep a commitment like that. That'd be flexible if she were also accused of any other crimes, of course, but our understanding is that at this time she isn't. And then of course there's an element of - her activities caught the public imagination, just as everyone learned that all of our suffering for the last decades was unnecessary, that people were forbidden from helping us, and so she became a very popular public figure and enjoys rather higher approval ratings than any of the politicians who'd be discussing a treaty with you."