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DUP sending conflicting messages

February 16, 2011

By Staff Reporter

Paisley told reporters last Thursday that the DUP may never share power with Sinn Fein regardless of whether the IRA is stood down. The comments sparked a fierce response from republicans, who said the DUP needed to “get real” about a deal with Sinn Fein.
Paisley’s remarks are thought to have alarmed several leading members of the DUP, most notably deputy leader Peter Robinson, who have continually said the party will share power with republicans if the IRA is completely stood down. Robinson briefed journalists Friday in a bid to reassure them that the DUP was serious about striking a deal at next week’s crunch talks.
Robinson and Jeffrey Donaldson have spent the summer months reiterating the DUP’s official line on power sharing, saying that the party will guarantee the stability of a devolved government if the IRA verifiably goes out of business.
Much has been made in the media about stark differences over policy within the DUP.
Robinson is regarded in some quarters as the DUP’s “De Klerk” figure. The Irish Department of Foreign Affairs has long thought of him as being more open to compromise than the DUP leader.
It is thought that both he and North Belfast MP Nigel Dodds will be in line to take control of the party when Paisley finally gives way. With suggestions that Paisley will be taking a back seat from here on in, the role of the two men in the coming weeks is deemed crucial.
Robinson has made positive noises about the eventual possibility of a deal with republicans, though he has also suggested that the resolution of outstanding issues such as paramilitary weapons and policing may take some time.
Robinson made a keynote speech to the Small Firms Association in Dublin Castle on Tuesday. He said the time for “wooly words and half measures” was over. Referring to Sinn Fein President Gerry Adams’s comments about unionists using the existence of the IRA as an “excuse” not to engage in the political process, he said: “If that’s what you believe, Mr. Adams, call our bluff, put us to the test, destroy the guns.”
It is not thought however that an imminent return of the power-sharing executive is on the cards. Donaldson, speaking to the Sunday Business Post, said that the DUP would not go into government even if the IRA were to stand down immediately.
He said the DUP was demanding a “cooling off” period in which it would make “its own judgments” as to whether the IRA had disarmed and disbanded. This would involve the delivery of further reports on “residual paramilitary activity” by the International Monitoring Commission and reports by Gen. John De Chastelain’s decommissioning body.
Donaldson’s criteria for power-sharing is unlikely to be accepted by Sinn Fein, which insists that it will not stand by and allow the DUP to renegotiate the Good Friday agreement. Sinn Fein sources said that IRA disbandment can only come about as part of an ongoing process and will not happen unless the British government moves on implementing the agreement including the return of the Stormont assembly.
British Prime Minister Tony Blair said Tuesday that if a deal could not be reached next week the British and Irish governments would have to look at another way forward. At a London press conference Blair told reporters that the process could not survive “endless negotiation.”
“I believe that a deal is possible,” he said. “If we don’t get one, we will have to look at another way forward.”
Blair would not be drawn on Paisley’s comments, saying: “You read the statements people make in Northern Ireland. Sometimes they appear helpful, sometimes they don’t appear helpful. I don’t always know what they mean.”

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