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Poll campaign moves forward without deal

February 16, 2011

By Staff Reporter

It was a downbeat beginning to a bruising election campaign to a new Assembly. It followed last week’s fiasco in which what was supposed to be a highly choreographed series of moves fell apart.
The elections are highly unlikely to result, however, in a new power-sharing executive and political stability. Instead, the vote could lead to even greater dangers to the peace process.
Difficult new negotiations, in a potentially more fractured political landscape, are likely after polling day, between parties who have lost what little trust and confidence they ever had in each other.
If the Rev. Ian Paisley’s DUP outstrips the Ulster Unionists, it will demand negotiations to a new agreement, without the participation of Sinn Fein. Paisley said he will “never” speak to republicans, irrespective of their electoral mandate.
Republicans feel angry that they delivered their side of the bargain, as they see it, only to be “left at the altar,” as the Sinn Fein president, Gerry Adams, put it, by the UUP failing to deliver a commitment on restoring the power-sharing executive and all-Ireland institutions.
The UUP, for its part, deny that it “pocketed” a massive act of IRA decommissioning and gave nothing in return. Members insist that the secretive nature of the act of putting arms beyond use did not reassure unionist public opinion.
Neither, said the UUP, was there any clarity on when all IRA arms would be decommissioned or any time table or guarantees that this would ever happen at all.
After the deal collapsed on Oct. 21, Sinn Fein and the Ulster Unionists held a number of meetings to try to find a way through their disagreements over decommissioning.
Proposals were put forward that would have meant a fresh report from the Independent International Commission on Decommissioning giving more detail on the kind of weapons that had been “put beyond use” by the IRA last week, while stopping short of a full inventory.
But despite the involvement of the British prime minister’s chief of staff, Jonathan Powell, and advice from the U.S. special envoy to Ireland, Richard Haass, the two sides were unable to agree to a new package.
The UUP leader, David Trimble, said on Monday that although progress had been made, time had run out for an agreement on a power-sharing executive to be reached ahead of elections on Nov. 26.
Earlier, Sinn Fein had accused the UUP leader of walking away from the current phase of the political process.
“He may be engaged in a little bit of damage limitation, but it is obvious Mr. Trimble isn’t prepared to go forward,” Gerry Adams, the Sinn Fein president, said.
Sinn F

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