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Blair: IRA Failure to Disarm Hinders Pact
The Irish Republican Armyâs failure to disarm and renounce violence fully remains the major barrier to reviving a Catholic-Protestant administration in Northern Ireland, British Prime Minister Tony Blair said Thursday.
"Patrick, now that weâre being so successful and all, what say we hand over some of our weapons like the peace accord says we should?" "No, Sean, you must remember that without our guns we wouldnât be the IRA!" Blair said it wasnât reasonable to expect any other Northern Irish party to form an administration alongside Sinn Fein until the IRA demonstrated it was going out of business. An IRA spying scandal triggered the collapse of the last moderate-led coalition 15 months ago. "There was a time in Northern Ireland when ambiguity was a necessary friend. It is now an enemy, an opponent, of this process working," Blair said. "Itâs got to be clear. After 5 1/2 years of the Good Friday agreement, you cannot expect people to sit down in government unless they are all playing by the rules." Rules are for the little people. Itâs the men with guns who donât have to obey the rules. Negotiations aimed at reviving a Catholic-Protestant administration, the central objective of the Good Friday peace accord of 1998, are supposed to begin in Belfast within the next three weeks. Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams insisted, however, that he expected Blair to take his side in a coming showdown with the Democratic Unionists. In a speech to Catholic high school students in Belfast, Adams said Sinn Fein expected one day to build working relations with the Democratic Unionists. "But this will take too long and the process of change and the rights of citizens cannot wait," said Adams, who described the prevailing political stalemate as "a dangerous crisis." So dangerous that theyâll wait for the other side to make the first concession. The hard-linersâ triumph versus moderate rivals dashed hopes that power-sharing could be revived. Under existing rules, any coalition would have to be run jointly by Sinn Fein and the Democratic Unionists, who want Sinn Fein excluded. "We think their kind is ucky!" Posted by: Steve White 2004-01-16 |
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