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Head to head

February 16, 2011

By Staff Reporter

By Anne Cadwallader

BELFAST — The long-awaited formal face-to-face meeting between Sinn Fein President Gerry Adams and the Ulster Unionist Party leader, David Trimble, is scheduled to take place on Thursday, with Trimble insisting "no guns, no government."

The two men have already met once this week, on Monday at Stormont, along with other party leaders, in a "workman-like" atmosphere, according to sources. "The usual courtesies" were exchanged, one said.

Trimble, however, says he will not shake the Sinn Fein leader’s hand, because "it still holds three tons of Semtex and hundreds of rifles." The two are likely to meet behind closed doors.

Last weekend, Trimble gained the support of his party executive for the Adams meeting, but a letter signed by four MPs expressed concern. One senior UUP source said the Trimble-Adams meeting was "at best a gross misjudgment and at worst a fundamental breach of principle."

Despite misgivings, however, Trimble has managed to keep his own party broadly in line. Republicans, he said this week, can play no part in the government of Northern Ireland unless they are trusted, and that can only come about with the beginning of disarmament.

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He predicted Sinn Fein is now on a "conveyer belt" that will lead inevitably to arms decommissioning. If that was not so, it would become clear "very, very quickly," he said, adding that disarmament is part of the agreement and must be carried out in full.

In a bid to keep the momentum going, Mo Mowlam, Britain’s Northern Ireland secretary, said this week that decommissioning was not a precondition to the implementation of the Stormont Agreement.

"It is not only important to have movement on decommissioning, but across the board, and I want the parties to try and work together to achieve that," she said. "In relation to decommissioning, of course it has got to happen, but what you mustn’t do is keep putting something up front and making it a hurdle to jump over."

Sinn Fein, though, is warning that serious problems may lie ahead, despite the week’s optimism surrounding President Clinton’s visit, if the proposed power-sharing Executive is not formed by the end of next month.

Adams sent a letter to Trimble last week asking that the agenda for the Monday meeting include setting up the political structures outlined in the Good Friday Agreement, including all-Ireland institutions.

The party believes that although Trimble has agreed to meet Adams for ground-breaking talks, he could still refuse to allow Sinn Fein its two places on the Executive unless the IRA has already begun actual decommissioning.

This was Trimble’s own base-line position last week in a tough speech to 2,000 people, including President Clinton, at the Waterfront Hall in Belfast, where he indicated that real progress would have to be made on disarming.

Trimble and other leading members of the UUP have repeatedly ruled out sitting on the power-sharing Executive with Sinn Fein ministers until there has been some IRA arms decommissioned.

There is a possibility, however, that Trimble will agree to go into the "shadow executive" with Sinn Fein, and then hold out at the stage when it assumes power and becomes the Executive proper.

A senior Sinn Fein source said "the hype surrounding the first meeting between Adams and Trimble has concealed a far more important question: Will the Unionists continue to use decommissioning as a pre-condition to our place on the Executive?"

"If the structures envisaged in the Good Friday Agreement are not in place by the end of October, then the two governments will have to come up with alternative ones. Should they fail to do so, we will all be in deep trouble," the source said.

"Our primary goal is to create the conditions for the Executive to be established and for the Policy and Implementing Bodies and the All-Ireland Ministerial Council to begin work."

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