This, in a nutshell, was the view of the Bush administration as reflected by Ambassador Mitchell Reiss and delivered to an attentive lunchtime audience in New York last week.
Reiss, the Bush administration’s special envoy to the peace process, was speaking at an event organized by the National Committee on American Foreign Policy, a Manhattan-based think tank that has provided a platform for debate and exchange on Northern Ireland for over a decade.
Reiss, who succeeded Richard Haass as special envoy, was warmly praised for his current efforts by both the committee’s chairman, William Flynn, and its president, George Schwab.
Reiss told his invited audience Thursday at the Mutual of America offices on Park Avenue that the recent political talks at Leeds Castle in England, though inconclusive, had demonstrated that the republican movement was now on the verge of an historic transformation.
“Ten years after the first IRA cease-fire, Irish republicans have indicated that they are willing to pursue their objectives exclusively through the democratic process,” Reiss, who attended the talks as official U.S. representative, said.
Leeds Castle, he said, would likely be remembered as the moment when the republican movement’s strategy of moving toward mainstream democratic politics had been formally accepted as policy.
“It is critical that we work to ensure that the republican movement follows through on this commitment and that all the loyalist paramilitary groups follow the lead of the IRA,” Reiss said. “We must also make sure that the devolved institutions are restored in a stable manner that fully preserves power sharing, a fundamental principle of the [Good Friday] agreement.”
While Leeds Castle was successful, Reiss noted, much work remains.
“The parties have continued their discussions and I’m confident their constructive approach will eventually yield results,” he said. “The Bush administration is committed to seeing this process to its conclusion, starting with the president.”
The ambassador’s speech was entitled “Northern Ireland, American Principles and the Peace Process,” and Reiss emphasized that the administration’s approach to the North was a reflection of “core American values,” these being the primacy of the rule of law, protection of human rights and safeguarding equality of treatment.
Reiss said that the U.S. supported “full implementation” of the Patten Commission report into policing. As was the case in any community, he noted, policing in Northern Ireland would never be perfect, but the culture of policing, as reflected by the new PSNI, was changing.
“Unfortunately, the largest nationalist party, Sinn F