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| Britain | |
| Blair: IRA Failure to Disarm Hinders Pact | |
| 2004-01-16 | |
The Irish Republican Army’s 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 we’re 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 wouldn’t be the IRA!" Blair said it wasn’t 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. "It’s 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. It’s the men with guns who don’t 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 they’ll wait for the other side to make the first concession. The hard-liners’ 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 |
| #5 Never lived there, but stayed there for a lengthy amount of time in '96. Had a few first hand accounts of the hatred and violence that place has seen from both sides. Slumming & Phil make good points. UDF/UVF & Red Hand need to disarm as well. I don't condone some IRA actions but don't blame them for not just turning over their weapons. I also empathize w/the moderate Protestants because it is their country to. The hatred cuts deep on both sides. Irish Catholics don't trust the Brits and the moderate Protestant's don't want a backlash if the Brits ever pulled out. I'm about as Irish as any Yank can be (my family came from Derry in 1869) and sometimes I think based on my family's antics those folks just like to fight. |
| Posted by: Jarhead 2004-1-16 10:57:21 AM |
| #4 Ulster Freedom Fighters "used" to have weapons? Does anybody really think they have given up more than a token amount of their armament? I admire the British. If it wasn't for them we would all be speaking German right now. Those of us who hadn't been made into lamp shades, that is. That doesn't change the basic fact however. One of the major defining events in Amercian history was slavery and the cvil war. Similarly, one of the defining events in British history is their 700 year occupation of Ireland. Both have about the same moral standing. Irish Catholics trust the British? When hell freezes over and the Red Sox win the World Series. The Irish and the Israelis could have the same outlook on life: Ourselves alone. Come to think of it, they do. |
| Posted by: Slumming 2004-1-16 9:57:17 AM |
| #3 Can't partition Ulster any further, can you? Lots of Catholics in Belfast, lots of Protestants between Belfast and the Irish border, in any direction. |
| Posted by: liberalhawk 2004-1-16 9:00:07 AM |
| #2 Paisley's Democratic Unionists had their own armed wing called the Ulster Freedom Fighters and they were considered the nastiest of the militant groups concerned only with killing catholics. And BTW I lived in Belfast in the 70s and it was where I decided that if you have 2 or more ethnic groups in one state who don't want to, or can't live together, then partition the land and give each group its own state. And yes I am aware that violates the UN charter or something but but its just another reason to disband the UN and forget the whole sorry mistake that is the UN. |
| Posted by: phil_b 2004-1-16 3:28:51 AM |
| #1 Sectarian violence in christian Ireland. Old grudges that should be finished. John Bull, are protestants not welcomed in a unified Ireland? |
| Posted by: Lucky 2004-1-16 12:36:36 AM |