February 16, 2011
By Staff Reporter
President Bush’s special envoy to Ireland, Richard Haass, said while visiting Belfast this week that bold steps are needed on every front but that not all sides may be ready for them.
It is now a question, he said, of whether the various parties are ready to grasp the opportunity. What is needed is action by the IRA and the British government and then a recognition by unionists of what has been done, he said.
The taoiseach and the British prime minister are visiting Hillsborough Castle on Wednesday for separate meetings with all the major parties, hopefully in time to save the process in time to hold Assembly elections on May 1.
It is believed they will reveal a plan encompassing policing, demilitarization, equality and the ending of all paramilitary activity in a bid to strike a long-lasting deal between republicans and unionists.
Sinn Fein is playing hardball in the days leading up to the meeting, with its president, Gerry Adams, insisting the crisis in the peace process is not about the IRA but about a power struggle within unionism.
“Is this the climate for a significant move by the IRA? I hardly think so,” Adams told a party conference in West Belfast. “Of course the existence of the IRA is an affront to its enemies, but this process is about changing all that in a way which will bring an end to all the armed groups.”
For many republicans and nationalists, he said, there is a serious question mark over whether Ulster Unionist leader David Trimble is willing and able to lead Unionism in support of the Agreement.
Trimble himself insisted that action by republicans was needed to end the political void, while accepting there were other issues than the IRA that would have to be looked at as part of full implementation of the Agreement.
“The obstacle to full implementation is continued paramilitary activity,” he said. “There had been little progress toward resolving the impasse “because the republican movement have not had the courage to take the decisions they should have taken years ago.
Meanwhile, Haass said at the end of his three-day visit to Dublin, London and Belfast that it would be known within six weeks whether the political will needed to restore devolved government existed.
“What I have in mind is an end to paramilitary activity and an end to paramilitaries retaining capability,” he said. “Boldness when it comes to the British government needs to be in the area of its military presence.”
Once those two actions have been agreed, he said, it will be time for unionists to follow suit.
“It is important that if these actions are taken by, on the one hand, paramilitaries, and by Her Majesty’s government, the significance of those actions be recognized by the leadership of the unionist parties,” Haass said.
During the week, a senior Sinn Fein source was downbeat about the possibility of a leap forward. He said press speculation of an imminent initiative from the IRA had “no basis.”
“Sinn Fein has provided both governments with a comprehensive document outlining the areas of the Agreement which have not been implemented,” the source said. “We are anxious to hear what they have to say.
“Republicans have delivered the republican constituency and over and above that, the IRA has moved on a number of occasions. They have rescued the process from collapse. The demand now for the surrender of the IRA in order for the British government to honor the commitments it already entered into are not realizable.”
The SDLP leader, Mark Durkan, said what is needed was a compact by all the parties and governments to completion of the promises made in the agreement.
“The SDLP will be making clear that having already negotiated an agreement, we now need to negotiate its complete implementation,” he said.