February 17, 2011
By Staff Reporter
On his visit to New York, Peter Robinson, the deputy leader of Ireland’s largest unionist party, the DUP, made some remarkable statements. First, he insisted unionists were finally ready to share power with their Catholic neighbors, adding that his party’s position was that this should only happen with elected representatives who are “committed to exclusively peaceful and democratic means.”
Of course, the rub lies in who gets to measure such a commitment, but with the principle conceded, power-sharing cannot now be far away.
Robinson went further. In the months ahead, he said, he hoped a clear message would emerge “that the eternal values of liberty and democracy have prevailed and that the sons and daughters of the Planter and the Gael have found a way to share the land of their birth and live together in peace.”
Meanwhile, speaking in Belfast, Sinn F