DUP, Sinn Fein win Euro seats

In an uncompromising acceptance speech, the DUP’s victorious candidate, Jim Allister, pledged his party would never share power with Sinn Fein while the IRA remained in existence.
Allister, along with Sinn Fein’s Bairbre de Brun, was elected on the first count with 32 percent support, twice the UUP’s, which stood at 16 percent (down 1 percent on its European tally of five years ago).
Amid scenes of wild jubilation at the King’s Hall count center in Belfast, with supporters waving Union Jacks and singing “God Save the Queen,” Allister said that Sinn Fein had to accept reality.
“This is not Jim Allister`s victory,” he said, “This is the victory of the Unionist people of Northern Ireland because in this election there was a most trenchant and aggressive push by IRA/Sinn Fein to become the biggest party in this province by chopping this poll.
“They failed. They failed because our strategy of win-win for unionism succeeded,” Allister said, welcoming the fact that transfers from him would secure a second seat for unionism.
He said the message from the election was that Unionism had spoken clearly and Sinn Fein could not ignore that message. It was that Unionists would never share power again with republicans while the IRA existed.
And as the British prime minister, Tony Blair, prepared for a fresh round of talks to restore devolution, the new DUP MEP said, “Listen up, Mr. Blair: we’re not going to settle for devolution with terror. We demand and, we will have, devolution without terror.”
Turning to Sinn Fein, he also said: “You will never again enter an executive while you are allied to terror. The days of pushover Unionism have gone.
DUP leader Paisley, who has stood down as an MEP after 25 years’ service, took the podium to say the result marked the beginning of the “laying off of the unionist community’s chains.”
De Brun, an Assembly member for West Belfast, said she was delighted that she would be joined in Brussels and Strasbourg by her Dublin colleague, Mary Lou McDonald.
“We have to move forward to ensure that we do as we said we would and that we promote the peace process, that we work to an all-Ireland agenda and that we work for equality and an Ireland of equals and a Europe of equals,” she said.
SDLP strategists were resigned for much of the day to the fact that they would lose former leader John Hume’s seat following his resignation. The party had hoped that in a tight contest for third place, their candidate Martin Morgan would finish ahead of Jim Nicholson. In the end, they were 3,605 votes behind the UUP.
Nicholson was himself elected under the proportional representation system by transfers from independent John Gilliland. The former Ulster Farmers` Union leader secured 36,270 votes and transferred to Nicholson in a larger volume than to Morgan.
Meanwhile, stalled talks on reviving the Assembly got under way on Tuesday. All the main parties were invited to Stormont for another session in the review of the workings of the Good Friday agreement.
The process began earlier this year, but was suspended when campaigning began for the European Parliament elections. British government sources said if a deal appears within their grasp, Blair and Taoiseach Bertie Ahern may hold a summit later this month.
The Ulster Unionist Party has challenged the DUP to reveal the nature of their talks after it was revealed that Sinn Fein and DUP held separate talks with Blair’s influential chief of staff, Jonathan Powell.
The DUP has not ruled out making a deal with Sinn Fein before the next British general election in 2006, but senior party figures have dismissed claims that an agreement is close.
DUP leaders insist that a deal is some distance ahead and one is highly unlikely before the end of the summer. Peter Robinson, the DUP deputy leader and senior negotiator, said, “There is a broad outline of what is necessary, but there are many issues we haven’t touched upon.”