February 16, 2011
By Staff Reporter
In a speech that blamed both republicans and unionists for the crisis in the peace process, Durkan appealed to the British government not to do back-door deals with “private armies” but to pull all the parties together in a joint effort to break the impasse.
In a clear reference to comments made last week by the Sinn Fein president, Gerry Adams, Durkan said it was not good enough for an individual party leader just to “envisage” a future without certain armed groups.
Adams, meanwhile, met with UUP leader David Trimble on Monday and extended an offer to meet the Ulster Unionist officials to explain his position and to discuss their doubts. Trimble rejected the offer.
At the SDLP conference, Durkan made it clear that he will not support any bid to exclude Sinn Fein from the power-sharing Executive. He revealed on Friday that the British prime minister, Tony Blair, had tried to persuade him the previous week to agree to Sinn Fein’s exclusion. Blair told Durkan at a meeting in London that the British government had sufficient information to exclude Sinn Fein from the Executive.
Durkan says Blair tried in vain to persuade him to agree. Rather than suspend the assembly, Blair was considering the option, demanded by the UUP’s Trimble, of having the Assembly debate a motion to exclude Sinn Fein on the grounds it had breached democratic principles. Under the terms of the agreement, for such a motion to succeed, because of its controversial and divisive nature, it would have required the backing of the SDLP.
Durkan said he told Blair that he wasn’t in possession of “any evidence” Downing Street purported to have to justify exclusion and that his party’s policy was one of inclusive politics.
Sinn Fein was furious at the claim. Adams and Martin McGuinness were understood to have phoned Downing Street to make strong protests at the suggestion that Blair had sided with the UUP leader over exclusion.
A spokesman for the British prime minister, when asked to comment on Durkan’s claims, said: “It’s clear an exclusion motion wouldn’t be supported by the SDLP and Downing Street’s view is that it’s much more important to focus on the future than the past.”
The revelation came a day after the IRA announced it had suspended its contacts with the Independent International Commission on Decommissioning. It said it had done so because the British bovernment had “by its own admission” not kept its commitments under the agreement. In a statement issued through the republican newspaper An Phoblacht/Republican News, the IRA said: “The onus is on the British government and others to create confidence in this process. They can do this by honouring their obligations.”
It is not the first time the IRA has broken off contact with the IICD and this suspension is being seen as a tactical move to give the IRA something it can do in return for future possible concessions from the British government on, for example, policing.
The day before the IRA statement, Sinn Fein’s McGuinness was quoted as saying that his war with Britain “is over” and said he is firmly committed to the political path.
In a BBC documentary broadcast, he stated: “My war is over. My job as a political leader is to prevent war. My job is to continue to ensure a political set of circumstances which will never again see British soldiers or members of the IRA lose their lives as a result of political conflict.”