February 16, 2011
By Staff Reporter
By Anne Cadwallader
BELFAST — Sinn Fein MP Martin McGuinness, speaking Sunday at an Easter commemoration in County Donegal, said that republicans are entering “the end phase” of their struggle and that he believes that the countdown to a united Ireland is under way.
“I earnestly believe,” he said before about 1,000 supporters at Stranorlar, “that we have begun the countdown to a united Ireland and are continuing to get that message out as widely as possible. There is much work to do but we believe that we are in the home stretch.
“Those who try to interpret Sinn Fein’s support for the Good Friday agreement as a change to its determination to achieve Irish unity are mistaken.”
At a similar rally in Dublin, the Sinn Fein leader, Gerry Adams, called on the Irish government to publish a consultation document for a united Ireland, saying the absence of any such plan in the south had been an obstacle to Irish unity.
Adams said that he finds it incredible that a discussion paper on Irish unity has never been produced. Irish unity must cease to be an abstraction and become a concrete proposition, he said.
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Republicans, Adams said, do not want unionists to be politically drowned in a sea of nationalism. Rather, he said, republicans, as friends and neighbors, must persuade unionists that they should put forward their vision for the future and engage with republicans about what a united Ireland would look like.
McGuinness echoed the theme, saying that Sinn Fein must understand the fears of unionists as a united Ireland comes closer. He said though the IRA decommissioning initiative last October, which many credit with saving the peace process from collapse, had presented its own difficulties for republicans, he nevertheless believes it was the correct move.