February 16, 2011
By Staff Reporter
Paisley, who had been in the hospital for tests, said Sinn Fein would have to change identity before he would speak to party members or consider it truly democratic and worthy of a place in a power-sharing executive.
Efforts, however, are continuing this week to try to broker an agreement between the DUP and Sinn Fein with meetings taking place in Belfast, London and Dublin, including one between Taoiseach Bertie Ahern and the British Prime Minister Tony Blair on Friday.
The two prime ministers will reassess the prospects of a deal emerging at the summit planned for the picturesque Leeds Castle in Kent, England, beginning on Sept. 16. A British spokesman said there were no plans to cancel the summit, even if an agreement seemed unlikely.
He insisted work was under way on four key issues: ending paramilitary activity, decommissioning all weapons, improving the operation of the Stormont institutions, and ensuring the support of all parties for the police.
The Sinn Fein president, Gerry Adams, met British and Irish officials in London on Monday, saying the Good Friday agreement is in “considerable difficulty.” The DUP, he said, had been honest in admitting it wants to destroy the agreement.
“The prospects of progress in seeing the agreement implemented are totally reliant upon the British government bringing the unionists through the pain barrier of reconciling themselves or coming to tolerate a new dispensation,” Adams said.
DUP deputy leader Peter Robinson is holding talks with senior British government officials in London on today, after having traveled to Dublin on Tuesday to address an audience of businessmen.
Meanwhile, Paisley was insisting any breakthrough in negotiations this month would require an overhaul of Sinn Fein as a political party and the end of the IRA.
The 78-year-old DUP leader lashed out at journalists who, he said, had lied about the state of his health. Flanked by members of his Free Presbyterian Church last Wednesday, Paisley appeared frail and pale but determined.
“I hope to take a few thousand pounds off some newspapers who lied about me,” he said. “I would say it’s just because I happen to be a Protestant and journalists happen to be Romanists.”
Paisley said Sinn Fein should not even be at the table until the IRA had disbanded and there had been an “end of IRA/Sinn Fein as a political party.”