“We’re talked out,” one weary official in Dublin said.
On no we’re not. Witness the fact that the leader of the Ulster Unionist Party, David Trimble, and Sinn Fein’s president, Gerry Adams, have met seven times in recent days. The UUP executive met on Friday to reject the Joint Declaration issued by the Dublin and London governments last spring which they said was the bottom line, just as they said over a year ago, after another marathon round of meetings in Weston Park, that that was the bottom line. Adams has met with Mark Durkan, leader of the other nationalist party in the North, the Social Democratic and Labor Party. Durkan has met with British Prime Minister Tony Blair and the taoiseach, Bertie Ahern. Ahern has met with Adams and Martin McGuinness, as has the Irish foreign minister, Brian Cowen. The UUP executive are holding another meeting this Friday, to see no doubt if there is anything left to reject. Slim pickings, I would think.
And these are just the public meetings. Imagine what must be going on behind the scenes, for usually, at least in republican circles, that is where the important meetings take place, the ones you never hear about unless you have a friend on the Army Council.
The question is, what have they all got to talk about? I ask because almost a year ago, Blair flew into Belfast and declared we had reached a fork in the road, the crunch point and the end of the parallel track (clearly, it was not the end of mixed metaphors). On that date, he spelled out what both governments had agreed was needed. He more or less declared that there was nothing left to talk about. What was now needed was action.
Yet, almost 12 months later, a somewhat weary Bertie Ahern still feels obliged to say: “We really need the parties to move into the decision stage on this. You can only do so much talking. We need action now.”
But the talks go on and the lights blaze into the night. What so far has been the result of the latest cycle of meetings?
“Nothing has moved on,” one jaded government official said.
In fact, some believe that things have actually moved backward. Sinn Fein is demanding that justice be devolved to a local Northern Ireland government before it agrees to join the district policing boards. Meanwhile, the same party is jumping up and down in fury at the UUP executive for its line-by-line rejection of the Joint Declaration. Unionists won’t have the British army “demilitarized,” they don’t want fugitives returning to the streets and laneways of the North, nor will they tolerate the disbandment of the Royal Irish Regiment. The list goes on.
Oddly enough, almost the only people who are upset about this are in Sinn Fein. The Irish and British officials merely shrug when the subject is raised. Dublin, indeed, has been getting messages from prominent Unionists suggesting that they do not take it too seriously and stressing that it is “nuanced” (as is everything is in the peace process, including, at times, the truth). The British point out that most of the things the Unionists have put in the “won’t do” column are in the hands of London, which can do them whenever it decides it is politically expedient.
Weary officials in both capitals see the Unionist action as a bit of realpolitik, with Trimble making it plain that the party won’t endorse anything until it sees what the IRA is going to do. Meanwhile, those in Sinn Fein can use the Unionist stance as proof of their continuing bad faith and as a justification for them not doing anything. Except talk, that is, and so the meetings go on and on. But in the meantime, aren’t we loosing sight of something?
“People want the big picture,” sighed another official, sequestered in Ireland’s capital city. “Do you accept the democratic process? If you do, then get on with it.”
The first IRA ceasefire will celebrate its 10th anniversary next year. The Good Friday agreement is already five years, six months old. Weston Park’s bottom line is 15 months old. Tony Blair’s fork-in-the-road speech celebrates its first anniversary this month. The Joint Declaration is six months old. And still the meetings go on, followed soon after by the excuses for the subsequent failures to reach agreement. The peace-weary officials yawn. The world turns away. The people in whose name these talks are supposedly being held, couldn’t give a damn, and get on with their lives.
Yes, despite the politicians’ failure to reach agreement, life goes on — and business, an important part of that life, still seeks to thrive, as thrive it must, politics or no politics. A delegation from Belfast came to New York on Oct. 7 to prove that proposition. They were here to plug the new Belfast — Babylon on the Lagan, at least that was what it looked like in the wide-angle photograph which illustrated the invitation to the event held in the Sky Club. Under a vanilla-tinted sunset, the lights of Belfast glittered golden and the Lagan was bluer than the Danube. And it was not a fake photograph.
The team was a mixture of Unionists and Nationalists, including Christopher McGimpsey, Unionist councilor for the Shankill area, Martin Morgan, the second SDLP man to be nominated lord mayor of Belfast, and Marie-Therese McGivern, director of development for the Belfast City Council. John Connorton brought them together.
From what I could see, Unionists and Nationalists were getting on very well together, at least in the Sky Club. They were definitely looking at the bigger picture. As proof of that, McGimpsey’s business card was in two languages — English and Chinese. This is probably a first in the history of the Ulster Unionist Party, if not the city council. It reflects the city’s growing trade relations with the world’s most populous nation.
Breaking news from the peace process: Adams is having talks with Trimble having talks with Durkan having talks with Ahern having talks with Blair having talks . . . having talks . . .