Ahern: no North breakthrough

Ahern said it “would be a mess” if elections were fought “on a negative basis.”
The statement was made after a meeting between the Ulster Unionist party leader, David Trimble, and Sinn Fein’s president, Gerry Adams. Adams also met with Mark Durkan, the leader of the Social Democratic and Labor Party.
Adams said Tuesday that the British and Irish governments and the UUP had “set the bar too high for republicans.”
The downturn in election hopes came the same day as the Canadian judge Peter Cory handed a series of reports on six of Northern Ireland’s most controversial murders this week, following a 15-month examination. Cory and his team were looking at the cases of lawyer Patrick Finucane, loyalist leader Billy Wright, lawyer Rosemary Nelson, Robert Hamill, officers Harry Breen and Bob Buchanan, and Lord Chief Justice Maurice Gibson and his wife, Cecily. Four of the reports were handed to the British authorities on Tuesday and two — those on the police officers and the judge — were given to Taoiseach Bertie Ahern.
All involved allegations of collusion between paramilitaries and the authorities. The governments must now ponder Cory’s findings and any recommendations he might have as to whether or not any of the cases should be the subject of a public enquiry.
The most controversial is the Finucane case. He was murdered by the Ulster Defense Association in February 1989. Allegations that the UDA had help from British army intelligence officers and members of the Royal Ulster Constabulary Special Branch have surrounded the murder from the beginning and have sparked two full-scale investigations already. The Finucane family has been calling for a public enquiry for many years. It is thought likely that Cory will recommend such a course. It is believed he has also asked for a public enquiry in two others. The governments have pledged to act on his recommendations.
As speculation still swirls around hopes for a decommissioning breakthrough, the U.S. special envoy to Ireland, Richard Haass, is likely to walk into a high-noon showdown between republicans and unionists next week when he visits Northern Ireland.
His arrival will coincide with a deadline by which elections must be called, if they are to go ahead as envisioned on Nov. 13. Haass will hold a round of meetings with the political parties at what is likely to be a critical stage in the peace process.
Northern Ireland’s parties are currently involved in a hectic round of meetings aimed at securing a groundbreaking move from the IRA and assurances from the Ulster Unionists that they will not collapse the Assembly again.
It’s been a year since the Assembly and power-sharing executive were suspended amid allegations of an IRA spy-ring at Stormont
Following now seven meetings between Sinn Fein’s Adams and the UUP’s Trimble in recent weeks, speculation has been mounting that the IRA is planning a third act of weapons decommissioning.
Some hope this might be enough to secure an Assembly election in November or December, but republicans say the prospect of the IRA signing up to the stipulations in Paragraph 13 of the British and Irish governments’ Joint Declaration are remote.
Sinn Fein’s chief negotiator Martin McGuinness has suggested that any future IRA move on arms should be more convincing for unionists and said his party was aware that the lack of transparency in past acts by the IRA had caused disappointment.
“We are not immune to the arguments that are being made, but at the same time we are also conscious that there are people out there in the anti-agreement Unionist side who, no matter what is said and done, will not be satisfied,” he said.
McGuinness said he did not want to damage the “prospect of progressive forces within Unionism” in a possible assembly election.
But McGuinness was speaking before the UUP effectively rejected the Joint Declaration at an executive meeting on Friday. The UUP decision surprised and dismayed the Sinn Fein leadership.
They had believed the hard line wing of the UUP had been soundly defeated at a recent meeting of the party’s ruling Ulster Unionist Council, but it appears now that Trimble has moved decisively towards the hard line position in order to unite his party.
The UUP said in a statement that the party would not be bound by the Joint Declaration, which it insisted did not provide “a satisfactory basis for progress.”
Subsequently, Adams and Trimble had a “difficult” meeting on Saturday. McGuinness and Adams expressed their opposition to the UUP resolution, it’s understood.
Trimble supporters, however, have stressed that the resolution does not explicitly reject the declaration. Trimble himself described it as “nuanced.” Sinn Fein is not mollified, however, and it appears agreement by next week is less likely.
After a meeting on the margins of an European Union summit in Rome on Saturday, Taoiseach Bertie Ahern said: “It will be ferociously difficult to go into elections if the atmosphere is not positive and where we can’t see our way through it.”
Meanwhile, the families of the four people accused of the Stormont IRA spy ring plot have called for the charges to be dropped. The families of Sinn Fein official Denis Donaldson, 53, his son-in-law, community worker Ciaran Kearney, 32, porter William Mackessy, 45, and caterer Fiona Farrelly, 47, criticized the police handling of the case.
Because it triggered the suspension of the Assembly, and further eroded unionist support for the agreement, the case is considered one of the most significant in Northern Ireland’s history.
The families insisted all four were innocent and supporters of the peace process. The statement said: “The director of public prosecution has yet to decide whether there is any basis for the charges.
“Their Special Branch accusers have yet to substantiate any of their widely-publicized allegations with evidence. The inordinate delays in providing disclosure to defense lawyers has been repeatedly raised in court,” it continued.
“This case rests on fingerprint evidence,” said Kevin Winters, Kearney’s lawyer. “So one would imagine that the fingerprint evidence, in some shape or form, would have been well collated by now. But it isn’t.”
(Anne Cadwallader in Belfast contributed to this story.)