Thursday/Friday, 20/21 January, 2000
Saturday/Sunday, 22/23 January, 2000 Monday, 24 January, 2000 Monday/Tuesday, 24/25 January, 2000 Wednesday-Friday, 26-28 January, 2000 Saturday/Sunday, 29/30 January, 2000 Monday, 31 January, 2000 Monday/Tuesday, 31 January/1 February, 2000Thursday/Friday, 20/21 January, 2000
Threat to collapse Executive within days
Tension over the issue is beginning to mount once again following a series of threatening comments from Ulster Unionists and Tories.
The Ulster Unionist Deputy Leader today warned that his party will begin the process of bringing down the Northern Executive within nine days unless evidence of an IRA weapons handover is forthcoming in the meantime.
After 18 months of stalling and delay, US Senator George Mitchell forged a breakthrough in November to allow the power-sharing Executive and other new political institutions began work. That deal was put in doubt within weeks, however, when UUP leader David Trimble issued a post-dated resignation letter for himself and the other UUP Ministers to take effect in the event of a failure to secure decommissioning by February. The UUP's 850-strong ruling council is set to consider that resignation letter and make a final decision on whether to support the new institutions in a February 12 meeting in Belfast.
But in Antrim yesterday, UUP leader David Trimble said that his party might force what he called a "temporary suspension" of the Executive in advance of that meeting. He then went on to confusingly suggest that people "should not be concerned by the crisis that will arise".
His deputy John Taylor also confirmed that his party will collapse the Executive if a report due by the end of the month from General John de Chastelain, the Canadian head of the International Commission on Decommissioning, showed no sign of IRA arms.
Mr Taylor told BBC Radio 4's Today programme: "If this report says. 'Yes, disarmament of the IRA arms has begun', then of course, that is fine.
"If it hasn't, then obviously we cannot continue any further and the
executive will be brought to an end."
In a new demand, the Ulster Unionist Deputy Leader indicated that only
the physical destruction of weapons, not merely decommissioning, would
satisfy his party.
"There are specific schemes laid down by the international commission, and these schemes involved the destruction of illegal arms and that must happen," he said.
Gerry Kelly, Sinn Féin Assemblyman for North Belfast, said that it would be untenable for unionists to end the political process after four years of an IRA ceasefire.
He repeated that it was for Gen de Chastelain and the armed groups, not the politicians—including Sinn Féin—to determine how to deal with the issue of decommissioning.
Mr Kelly told Today: "Nationalists trusted the parties to come to an
agreement and to set up the structures
and the institutions and actually work with them.
"Now unionism is saying it won't be a big crisis, it might be a wee crisis. It's absolutely the wrong way to make politics work.
"It would be untenable for unionism to pull down a working executive, which has been there for the first time in 80 years and has the possibility of making real politics work and ending the violence.
"The IRA has now been involved in ceasefire for over four years," he said. "That is massive. To talk about pulling the executive down when the guns have been silent for such a long time and continue to be silent, for republicans and nationalists is very hard.
"In terms of the decommissioning issue ... that is up to the armed groups, not Sinn Féin. Under the Good Friday Agreement, decommissioning was handed to Gen de Chastelain and the armed groups to settle.
"Gerry Adams has gone to the IRA and said that there is an alternative here and it is that politics can achieve what we have been trying to achieve for a very long time."
Meanwhile, Sinn Féin assembly member, Mitchel McLaughlin clashed with Conservative Party shadow secretary of state, Andrew Mackay, who he accused of making uninformed comments in his trip to the predominately nationalist city.
Mr Mackay had also said people had to "face up to the fact" that if there was no decommissioning by the end of this month, the new Stormont executive would fall.
Mr McLaughlin said a reading of the Good Friday Agreement would make clear no party could set unilateral deadlines outside of the deal.
"If Mr Mackay cannot make a positive contribution to solving the problem that the Ulster Unionists have created for themselves then he would serve the whole process better by keeping his comments to himself," he said.
And Ulster Unionist negotiator and Enterprise Minister Reg Empey bluntly rejected a comment by Sinn Féin's Education Minister Martin McGuinness, after he called on David Trimble to "hold his nerve" and realise decommissioning was a voluntary and not obligatory act.
Said Empey: "Martin McGuinness, remember this. It is a voluntary exercise to keep the executive in existence. It is a voluntary exercise to form the executive. People had better understand that."
Saturday/Sunday, 22/23 January, 2000
Analysis: More than cosmetic changes needed
Last September, First Minister David Trimble threatened to resign if the proposals by the Patten Commission on policing were implemented. Interestingly, this threat has not been repeated over the past weeks as it gradually became clear that Secretary of State Peter Mandelson, despite his fulsome praise of the force, was intent on carrying out most of the recommendations contained in the Commission's report. Although Trimble was reputed to be "seething with anger" at the leaks ahead of this Wednesday's statement by Mandelson, he stopped short of restating any intention to resign over the issue. Instead, it was left to Ken Maginnis to huff and puff that implementation "would undermine" the peace process.
Maginnis also made the curious claim in the run-up to the announcement that the proposed changes would "re-politicize" the police force and "set policing back 30 years". Exactly when it was that the RUC was not a political institution Maginnis did not make clear. Nor was it apparent who the former B-Special thought had been in control of policing 30 years ago, if not his party.
Central to the current Unionist argument against change is an attempt to shift the blame for the RUC's failings onto the Catholic population; any problems with policing, they insist, amounts to no more than an erroneous 'perception' by Catholics of the RUC as hostile, corrupt and sectarian, as if this 'perception' were not supported by very real experience, and because Catholics are 'intimidated' out of joining the RUC by republicans rather than because of the intolerable working environment.
But, despite this and despite the highly publicised presentation of a petition to Downing Street, orchestrated by the Police Federation and the Daily Telegraph, demanding the retention of the RUC in its present form, there has in fact been a de facto acknowledgement by the force itself that the game is up and major change can be avoided no longer. Representatives of the force have already begun discussing redundancy terms with the Northern Ireland Office, with hundreds of officers allegedly keen to exploit the generous terms to be offered.
At the core of the Patten Report was a stated desire to depoliticise policing. It acknowledged that the RUC has historically been the effective instrument of unionism and that the role and activities of the RUC have, since its formation, been a central component of the north's political landscape. It accepted that the force is seen as "our police" by the unionist population, an assertion amply borne out by the intensity of unionist anger at any proposed change. It concluded that, in general terms, the symbols of the British monarchy and state, which form an integral part of the ethos and identity of the RUC, were undesirable. It recommended that the force should be renamed the Northern Ireland Police Service; that it adopt a new badge and symbols which are "entirely free from any association with either the British or Irish states", citing the crest of the Assembly as an example; that "the Union flag should no longer be flown from police buildings"; and that "on those occasions on which it is appropriate to fly a flag on police buildings, the flag flown should be free from association with the British or Irish states".
But as ever, the restructuring of the RUC has been hedged around with qualifications, with the Secretary of State declaring that any changes were dependent on a number of other factors, most specifically the "security situation". The introduction of all the changes is to be 'phased', Mandelsonian for 'very slow'.
Although the proposed reduction of police numbers to around 7,500 would be welcome, as would the possibility of greater local control of the force through police partnership boards, the changes to the name, oath and symbols of the RUC, whilst crucial, represent only a cosmetic change to the external appearance of the force, and do little to address the continuous violations of human rights, collusion and overt sectarianism, issues which in all the unionist sound and fury have been ignored. It is for such reasons that Sinn Féin and others have insisted that the slate must be wiped clean and an entirely new police force created in order to avoid the probability that officers who have indulged in horrendous violations will be allowed to continue in the force.
Elite squad edges nearer proof of RUC collusion
London Independent
The police incident room is like no other in the United Kingdom. Just inside the entrance is a safe standing four feet tall. The building is surrounded by a 15ft wall topped with security cameras. Armed officers stand guard at the entrance to the compound.
Welcome to Belfast and the "Stevens 3" inquiry - the latest in a series of investigations spanning 10 years into allegations that members of the Army and the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) colluded with loyalist terrorists to murder the Catholic lawyer Pat Finucane in 1989. Named after the head of the inquiry, Sir John Stevens, who takes up the post of Metropolitan Police Commissioner on 1 February, the 17-strong inquiry team is operating in a state of virtual siege.
None of the hand-picked police officers leaves the offices without an armed guard and they divide their time between the compound on the outskirts of Belfast and a hotel at a secret location.
There are no trips to city bars and restaurants or visits to the cinema during the week-day stay in Northern Ireland. Only after they fly back to their homes in London and the North-east of England for the weekends can they can resume their family lives.
The high state of security reflects the sensitivity and potential dangers surrounding the inquiry. Sir John, as well as several of his team from the two previous inquiries, were recalled to Belfast last April after fresh allegations were made over the shooting of Mr Finucane.
The well-known defence solicitor was killed by gunmen from the paramilitary Ulster Defence Association (UDA).
The previous investigations into claims of official collusion in loyalist killings resulted in the jailing of Brian Nelson, a key UDA member who was also a British Army agent. Nelson said he had warned his handlers that the organisation was planning to kill Mr Finucane, but that nothing was done. Nelson was jailed for 10 years after being found guilty of 20 charges, including conspiracy to murder.
Documents that were used by Nelson are being analysed for prints and DNA to link the agent with Army handlers and to see whether any RUC officers or terrorists have had any contact with them.
The Stevens 3 inquiry has found that "wheelbarrow loads" of information about IRA members, which the secret Army unit helped Nelson compile, are still in the hands of loyalist terrorist groups.
After renewed pressure from human rights groups, lawyers and politicians, who alleged that the RUC collaborated with the killers because Mr Finucane was viewed as having republican sympathies, Sir John and his team were recalled. However the British Irish Rights Watch group, which produced a report alleging collusion, opposed the appointment, calling instead for a full judicial inquiry. Within a few weeks William Stobie, a UDA man, was charged with the Finucane murder. The Stevens team has now also identified a six-man loyalist team it believes is responsible for committing the murder. Three other men from Belfast have been charged in relation with terrorist documents.
Stobie, 48, caused something of a sensation at a remand hearing last June when he said that he had been a police informer for Special Branch and on the night of the death of Mr Finucane had informed his handlers on two occasions by telephone that a person was to be shot. He has also admitted that he was the UDA quartermaster who supplied the guns used in the Finucane killing and later disposed of at least one of the weapons.
The Stevens 3 team failed in legal efforts last October to retrieve material from a Belfast journalist, Ed Maloney, about a 1990 interview with Stobie.
The Stevens 3 team has spent the past three months trawling documentation and tape recordings, interviewing RUC officers and informers and having huge quantities of items forensically tested. Its painstaking work has uncovered further material to support Stobie's allegations. Detectives have also obtained evidence to pinpoint which UDA men were responsible for the killing.
The pressures for the detectives working on such an intense and politically sensitive case are immense.
The offices at the RUC premises at Carrickfergus, Antrim, where the incident room is located on the top floor, can be found by following the blue signs "Stevens Investigation - 3". On the entrance to the office is a large sign saying "no unauthorised entry".
The first thing in the room that catches the eye is the vast iron safe. Inside are vital documents and the charred remains of material damaged in an earlier "mystery" blaze.
The fire broke out on the night of 10 January 1990. At 6am the next day the Stevens team was due to arrest a group of loyalist paramilitaries, including Brian Nelson, the Army agent. This has led to allegations that the fire was started by the Army in an attempt to destroy secret files held on Nelson. A former Army intelligence officer who has made similar allegations was arrested last month and bailed in connection with possible breaches of the Official Secrets Act.
A separate room, known as the "Newcastle Room", is now used to keep the thousands of documents. In the main incident room there are signs that the officers are dug in for a long stay. On many of the desks there are pictures of children and wives. Mementoes of home life are kept next to the computer screens and maps. The 14 Metropolitan Police officers and three detectives from the Northumbria force who make up the team always travel with armed RUC drivers.
One detective said: "We don't go out for a walk or go to the local pubs. We spend 12 hours a day at the office and the rest of the time at the hotel, where we've been for more than eight months.
He added: "There's no way we are going to be out in public - we are not going to put ourselves in a position where we could be accused of compromising the inquiry."
The time spent in Ireland puts a strain on family life. "The wife and children were not particularly impressed when I told her I was going away, but I can't let him [John Stevens] down and I would never do that," said another officer. "JS is someone who commands loyalty. At the end of the day he is loyal to us."
Sir John, speaking during one of his regular visits to Belfast, recalled how on his previous inquiries, "there was a lot of work to discredit what we did. The loyalist paramilitary try to scare us."
He added: "I have had threats but it goes with the job. There was a worry at one stage about personal safety."
One officer, Vince McFadden, 57, the former head of Surrey CID, retired more than four years ago. But he was the first to volunteer to go back on the squad. "There is a job to be finished," he said.
The investigation in Belfast is expected to be completed by the summer. The team, and its crate-loads of documents, will be relocated to London.
The final report into the collusion allegations is not expected until 2001.
Copyright © 2000 London Independent
Monday/Tuesday, 24/25 January, 2000
Analysis: Politics in the blackboard jungle
By Des Wilson
One of the things Mr. Martin McGuinness, the North's new Education Minister, could do is get schools to offer education in politics to children. Not party politics, but teaching children about how governments work, what ministers do, what civil servants are for, who has responsibility for money and school buildings, how people vote, why they vote, and so on and so forth.
A surprising thing about our education system is that you can come out of it knowing where the Ganges rises and flows in India but not knowing about ministers and civil servants who are sitting—or standing around, maybe—a couple of miles away, deciding our fate. But then so many things could be learned in schools before learning how many shoes are made in Dublin or what is happening to the Fens.
Self-preservation and development, for example. How to find your way around your own county, how to give first aid, how to enjoy yourself, how football teams work, what all the buildings downtown are for, how to look after your health, how many things you can cure without calling the doctor. There are so many interesting things to learn, and if they were included in school programs, maybe children would find school more interesting.
The other day, a schoolgirl of about 14 put out her hand to signal a bus to stop. The bus went on, and the girl put out her hand again, this time in what used to be called an obscene gesture. It is hardly likely that her school taught her to do that, but then on the other hand her school did not succeed in persuading her she should not do it. Maybe her school had strict rules about not smoking while in school uniform but had no rules about making offensive gestures at bus drivers.
It is largely a question of what is on the program. (Why some persons insist on calling a school program a "curriculum," I shall never know. Maybe a holdover from the days when you were considered swanky if you threw in a word or two of Latin to impress the natives. "Ah," someone would say, "carpe diem!" Or, quoting Winnie the Pooh, "De ursis non est dubitandum." None of us natives were impressed, of course, although we kept on calling things curriculums ( or curricula) when we could just as easily call them programs.)
But that is neither here nor there. Teaching children how to survive when their overworked mothers and fathers have to go into hospital or away to work, is not, of course, education about politics. Nor is telling children how to stop schoolmates from bleeding in the street when they make a dash for that unstoppable bus and collide with a door that has no respect for their school uniform.
There are so many things that education is about. How things work, how we survive, how we relax and enjoy life, how we look after ourselves and each other. Interesting things, every one. "And after that, children, we can spend a few minutes after lunch looking at the height of Mount Everest and the course of the Thames, while paying due attention to the regular and irregular verbs, parsing, analysis, the places you put aspirations and the places you fulfil your aspirations, the place of eclipsis in modern Irish life, and the reasons why Hamlet went off his head, if he did go off his head, and what he said while doing it, or not doing it, in verse and in prose."
All in good time, when the important things have been attended to. Some aspects of education are dictated by the needs of business and industry—but also by the difficulty of getting insurance cover.
How educationally useful it would be, for instance, if youngsters were given a few quarters and a map and told that today's lesson would consist of finding their way to Upper Buckna and back as an aid to map-reading, self-reliance, and money management. But they wouldn't be covered by insurance; that's one reason you couldn't do it. Lack of insurance is a reason for a number of things that cannot be done in education.
And of course there are dangers in our streets to which youngsters must not be exposed. That is another reason.
Quite right; that makes sense. Which is why good education will deal with those dangers and why they are there, and what you can do to protect yourself against them. As an educational priority. What an exciting job Mr. Martin McGuinness has! So may he not only bring life to his department but enjoy every minute doing it.
Wednesday-Friday, 26-28 January, 2000
Artificial crisis over decommissioning
The peace process was being pushed toward a new crisis over the decommissioning of IRA weapons today as politicians awaited the publication on Monday of a progress report on decommissioning.
Despite a successful outcome to the Mitchell Review in December, the Ulster Unionist Party appear set to collapse the new political dispensation in Ireland unless Monday's report by the Independent International Commission on Decommissioning (IICD) indicates the destruction of IRA weaponry is imminent. Without a start to decommissioning, Ulster Unionist leader David Trimble has vowed to resign as First Minister at a meeting of his party's ruling council on February 12.
But few believe the IRA will respond to the hype and ultimatums emanating from the Ulster Unionist Party leader, who has been accussed of manufacturing a crisis as a cover for pulling out of the Good Friday Agreement.
Yet Trimble appears to have won a measure of support from Britain's Northern Secretary Peter Mandelson, who said he would "draw the obvious conclusion" if the de Chastelain's report does not indicate that decommissioning is on course.
Sinn Féin President Gerry Adams MP warned that Mandelson may be planning to trigger another review of the Good Friday Agreement before the UUP ministers resign—because the First Minister might not get re-elected.
NO DEFAULT
Speaking in Newry on Thursday night, Mr Adams said the only premise— "and it would be an entirely fabricated one"—would be for this to be presented as a default on decommissioning. He insisted the decommissioning issue would be successfully resolved and there was "no basis whatsoever" for a review outside of the collapse of the Executive.
"There has been no default on decommissioning. There is no reason for the Executive to collapse or for any minister to resign."
He pointed out that The IRA had shown its willingness to enhance the peace process through the silence of its guns and through the engagement with the IICD. "Is this to be thrown back in their faces?," Adams asked.
SDLP INSINUATIONS
The two nationalist parties yesterday clashed publicly on the issue. SDLP leader John Hume called for an immediate IRA decommissioning "gesture" to ensure the political institutions survive the unionist threat.
His comments came after his Deputy, Seamus Mallon, controversially claimed Republicans were "hedging their bets" in failing to secure an IRA weapons handover. Mallon also warned of the difficulty in salvaging the Good Friday Agreement following a unionist withdrawal from the executive.
"If that were to happen there would be little prospect of re-establishing the institutions before further significant progress on decommissioning," he said.
Sinn Féin countered by pointing out that he political parties are required under the Good Friday Agreement to help bring about decommissioning by the end of May—not February 12.
Mr Adams said he was "very disappointed" at Mr Mallon's statement, which he said "flew in the face of what Mr Mallon knows".
"I take exception to a senior member of any party and particularly someone who is deputy first minister moving outside the terms of the Good Friday Agreement," he said.
He urged people to remain calm. "All of us who are leaderships of parties have to defend the agreement. I think this is grist to the mill of the rejectionist unionists," Mr Adams said.
LOYALIST BLAME GAME
Loyalist paramilitaries were alsop being urged to make a weapons handover, but only to heighten the pressure on the IRA and to set up Republicans for a fall.
John White, of the Ulster Democratic Party, the UFF's political representative, said a handover now would shift all the blame on to the IRA leadership if the process collapsed.
"If the UFF were to move now, all the criticism would be directed at Sinn Féin," he said.
"If this whole thing unravels people, people here and throughout the world, should know the blame lies with Sinn Féin/IRA."
IRA 'NOT CONFIDENT'
Sinn Féin Assembly member Alex Maskey meanwhile suggested that the IRA remains wary of a British government which has failed to scale down its huge military presence in the North of Ireland.
Mr Maskey made his comments at Stormont after accompanying a group of nationalist Belfast residents who handed in a petition to Peter Mandelson demanding the removal of army spy posts on the top of blocks of flats in the New Lodge and Falls Road areas as part of the demilitarisation process.
"The British government were committed under the Good Friday Agreement to produce a demilitarisation package - that is one year late," he said. "The British government have very clearly defaulted in this particular aspect of their obligations."
The IRA was "not confident the British war machine has removed itself from the equation", he declared.
"The IRA is never going to leave the community from which they come defenceless ever again because of the experiences of the past".
Wednesday-Friday, 26-28 January, 2000
Disqualification Bill passes
After a full day of parlimentary debate at Westminister was cancelled because of a 24-hour Tory/Unionist filibuster, the Disqualification Bill to allow members of the Irish parliament to sit in the Six-County Assembly and the House of Commons was passed unamended on Thursday by a 2-1 margin. Sinn Féin TD Caoimhghin O'Caolain welcomed the move and urged the Irish government to clear the way to allow citizens in the Six Counties to be directly represented in the Dail.
O'Caolain said: "The issue of representation is one that Sinn Féin has been pursuing for some time now and we welcome moves towards this end in the House of Commons. This development should spur the Irish government to open the Dail to representatives of the citizens of the Six Counties.
"In Sinn Féin's submission to the all-party Oireachtas [Irish parliament] Committee on the Constitution, we urged that Northern political representatives elected in the Six Counties should be allowed to participate in Dail proceedings.
"We await a swift and positive response from the Irish government on this crucial democratic issue."
In a related issue, Ulster Unionist Security Spokesman Ken Maginnis threw the matter of allowing Sinn Féin MPs access to Westminster facilities into some confusion with his claim that he had been told by the Secretary of State that no motion would be brought forward and no such facilities will be made available unless decommissioning takes place.
Nevertheless, closer scrutiny of Maginnis' claim reveals that he was, as he put it, informed of this apparent decision "through the normal channels at the Northern Ireland Office", rather than directly by Mandelson himself.
For its own part, the Northern Ireland Office contradicted Maginnis when it said on Wednesday that it remains the intention of the government to bring a motion to the House of Commons in order to lift the ban. The NIO confirmed that the matter is not a question of if, but when the matter is brought before parliament.
However, the spokeswoman would not be drawn on whether any attempt would be made to explicitly link the issue to decommissioning. The mechanics of the matter are fairly straightforward; if the Cabinet decides to go ahead and remove the ban on Adams and McGuinness, Margaret Beckett, the Leader of the House, will simply bring forward a motion, announced about two weeks in advance, to the House of Commons.
Because of the huge Labour majority, such a motion would inevitably be passed despite Unionist and Conservative opposition. It remains unclear why the ban could be imposed at the behest of the Speaker of the House without any need for parliamentary consultation or vote, but cannot be lifted in the same way.
Saturday/Sunday, 29/30 January, 2000
Unionists marching to the brink
With unionists about to pull the plug on Ireland's 21-month-old peace deal, Sinn Féin President, Mr Gerry Adams, has made a last-ditch appeal to them to work with nationalists to resolve the issue of IRA arms.
He also warned that a weapons handover would never occur if the Ulster Unionists now decided to collapse the new political institutions.
"I would appeal to unionists not to hard-ball or to go down to the wire on this issue, to continue to work with us and others to resolve the issue in the same way as we have worked with them to resolve other issues," Mr Adams told the BBC's Breakfast with Frost.
Following agreement in the Mitchell Review last November, the IRA appointed a representative to liaise with the IICD, the body responsible for tackling the issue of paramilitary weapons and the power-sharing Executive was set up, some 19 months after they were agreed.
But, in an unforeseen twist, Ulster Unionist leader David Trimble vowed to kill off the new-born administration if IRA decommissioning had not begun by February.
A progress report later today or early tomorrow by the IICD could see the UUP Ministers packing their backs and leaving Stormont, collapsing the Executive and leaving the Belfast Assembly in limbo. In the ensuing power vacuum, the British goverment is expected to reverse the devolution process and resume Direct Rule from London, at least temporarily, pending another Review.
Mr Adams warned that Trimble's all-or-nothing manouevre could make decommissioning more difficult—the IRA would be likely to withdraw from talks with the IICD if the institutions set up under the 1998 Good Friday Agreement were collapsed.
"It is clear that if this process collapses, it is clear that if the UUP walk out of the process, it is clear that if the British government is spooked into suspending the process on a unionist threat to walk out, decommissioning is never going to happen."
Speaking at the start of yesterday's Bloody Sunday commemoration in Derry, Mr Adams said: "The IRA were persuaded to deal with the decommissioning commission, not for two months, not from December to January but on the basis that the institutions would be in place.
"And it strikes me that it would be very difficult to keep the IRA in there if the institutions are removed."
Mr Adams said that while nationalists now had a sense of "whatever limited political power there is in this statelet", and while partition had been "transcended", much of the Good Friday Agreement remained unfulfilled and incomplete.
"Patten [the report on policing reform] still has to be delivered and the British government hasn't even started to put legislation in place. The whole demilitarisation situation is well behind the self-proclaimed deadline which the British government has put," he pointed out.
Meanwhile, David Trimble claimed his Ulster Unionist Party had "no room left to manoeuvre" and its support for the Executive was "running out of road".
He said he was ready to pull out of the Executive because Sinn Féin's Ministers "have not demonstrated a commitment to peaceful means".
In a further sign of hardening of unionist attitudes, the newly-elected chairman of the Ulster Young Unionist Council, Philip Weir, said his party would reject even a symbolic arms handover. He said such a gesture without a detailed schedule for the full destruction of IRA arms by May was "worthless".
There was also a hard-line statement from the political representatives of loyalist paramilitaries. The leader of the Progressive Unionist Party David Ervine said the paramilitary UVF "will not consider decommissioning" before the IRA does "or if there is still a threat from republicanism".
The Six County Minister of Education, Sinn Féin's Martin McGuinness, said it was important that everyone understood there was a clear agreement on decommissioning—the Good Friday Agreement. Mr McGuinness said the GFA was very clear and placed responsibility for progress on all the political parties.
Saying that Sinn Féin should singularly deal with this issue was wrong, he added. Sinn Féin had already done much more than any of the other parties in an attempt to resolve conflict. Now David Trimble was "moving the goalposts, breaking through deadlines, and holding up the formation of the Executive".
"He is threatening to collapse the institutions and change the rules on decommissioning. That is crazy."
He said the issue of IRA arms decommissioning should be left to General de Chastelain's commission and the IRA.
"We have just come out of a review with Senator Mitchell and we agreed that the issue of decommissioning be handed back to the general where it should have been in the first place."
If the agreement collapsed, it would not be because of decommissioning but because the unionist leadership was not prepared to accept the type of changes proposed, he said.
Clegg conviction overturned
Pat Finucane Centre
The Pat Finucane Centre has condemned the "complete and absolute failure of the legal system to deliver justice to the families of murdered Belfast teenagers Martin Peake and Karen Reilly following the decision this morning to quash the conviction of Paratrooper Lee Clegg." The two teenagers were shot dead when paratroopers opened fire on their vehicle in West Belfast in September 1990. A third teenager, Markievitz Gorman, was wounded in the same incident.
Clegg's original conviction for the murder of Karen Reilly was overturned. At the same retrial in 1999 he was sentenced to four years for wounding with intent in relation to the death of Martin Peake. This conviction has now been overturned.
The spokesperson continued, "amidst all the legal arguments we should not lose sight of the following facts as established at the trial; Lee Clegg and other paratroopers fired 19 shots at a vehicle killing two unarmed teenagers on September 30 1990. Following the shooting, Markievitz Gorman, wounded in the arm, was dragged from the car, kicked on the head and stamped on by a soldier. She was subsequently awarded damages. Lee Clegg conspired with others to pervert the course of justice by claiming that a soldier, Christopher Aindow, had been struck by the vehicle. In fact Aindow was struck on the leg by another member of the patrol using a rifle butt. The sole RUC officer accompanying the 16 man patrol showed considerable personal integrity in exposing this attempt to pervert the course of justice. Aindow was dismissed from the British Army following his conviction of malicious wounding. Clegg, convicted of murder, was allowed to remain and was eventually promoted. In the wake of the shooting senior paratroop officers allowed a mock-up of the vehicle to be put on the wall at Palace Barracks which read, "Vauxhall Astra-built by robots, driven by joyriders, stopped by A Company." "Ten years on and the legal system has failed abysmally to bring to justice those who murdered
Karen Reily and Martin Peake. This is an indictment of the entire system and brings into sharp relief the importance of the current review of the criminal justice system. Questions must be asked of the Director of Public Prosecutions as to why Clegg was never charged with attempting to pervert the course of justice following the incident.
Monday/Tuesday, 31 January/1 February, 2000
Grave fears for peace process
The Irish and British governments have urgently requested "a breathing space" to seek ways of avoiding the suspension of the Belfast Assembly following the announcement by David Trimble yesterday that he would withdraw his party from the power-sharing Executive over the issue of arms decommissioning.
Mr Trimble said a suspension of the political institutions was "regrettable, but inevitable" because his party could not continue in government without a symbolic act of decommissioning by the IRA. The Ulster Unionist leader has also threatened to formally resign as First Minister by Friday, a move which could irreversibly collapse the new political institutions.
Sinn Féin has said the peace process is facing its most serious crisis since the 1998 Good Friday Agreement was signed. Despite grave concern over the future of the peace process and the North's first fully inclusive administration, it appears likely that Britain's Secretary of State Peter Mandelson will suspend the institutions of the Agreement within the next 24-48 hours. This was described as "the worst possible scenario" by Sinn Féin's Gerry Kelly, who said he was "not reassured" following a meeting with Mandelson in Belfast.
Trimble has sought to justify his actions yesterday on the basis that January 31st was the agreed deadline for IRA decommissioning. This has been vehemently denied by Sinn Féin, who have said they are sticking to the terms of the Good Friday Agreement which requires the parties to try to bring about decommissioning by May.
In any event, the new deadline is February 4, which is the date David Trimble yesterday said he put down on a letter of resignation presented at the December meeting of his party's ruling Ulster Unionist Council.
At yesterday's press conference in Stormont, Mr Trimble said: "It is a matter of very great regret to me that this has turned out this way. I hoped right up to the last minute that republicans would respond because this is the best chance we have had. And I don't see how it is going to be possible for a better chance to come."
A second meeting of the UUC is to be held on February 12 to make a final decision on the party's participation in the Executive. Mr Trimble said he could not see how he could go back to the Ulster Unionist Council and ask them to continue in government with Sinn Féin. It would certainly not be possible "without a lot more being on the table", he added, indicating that unionist efforts to extract a better deal on arms are still ongoing.
Hopes that Ulster Unionists may yet be persuaded to continue their critical participation in the eight-week-old administration were also boosted by an IRA statement emphasising that organisation's good faith and commitment to "a permanent peace". The IRA statement reads, in full:
"The IRA were persuaded to enter into discussions with the IICD [Independent International Commission on Decommissioning] to help move the situation out of the political vacuum in which it had been stuck for the previous 18 months.
"We did so in good faith and constructively. Our representative met with the IICD on three occasions and as late as last night we were in contact with the IICD.
"Our representative stressed that we are totally committed to the peace process, that the IRA wants a permanent peace, that the declaration and maintenance of the cessation, which is now entering its fifth year is evidence of that, that the IRA's guns are silent and that there is no threat to the peace process from the IRA."
Sinn Féin President Gerry Adams welcomed the statement, which he said was "significant" and "further evidence of the IRA's ongoing positive contribution to the peace process. It is clear that the IRA have been engaged positively with the IICD."
He urged Peter Mandelson to "exercise caution" in his public comments over decommissioning. "It is the IICD's remit to work with the armed groups to address the issue of decommissioning and obviously to make assessments on progress. The unionists will seize on comments from Mr. Mandelson regarding this matter to support their own position."
In a grim warning to journalists at Stormont, Mr Adams added: "If the Ulster Unionist Party either walks away from the process or forces the governments to collapse this process, then I don't see how we are going to put it together again."
Amid intensive efforts to keep the peace process going, Mr Trimble
was meeting British Prime Minister
Mr Tony Blair in Downing Street. Sinn Féin President Mr
Gerry Adams was also meeting the Taoiseach Bertie Ahern in Dublin, while
Northern Secretary Peter Mandelson was holding talks with all the parties
in Belfast. United States President Bill Clinton is also reported to be
involved in the behind-the-scenes diplomacy aimed at preventing a complete
collapse and a return to direct rule from London.
Bertie Ahern today said there was no doubt that Mr Trimble would carry out his threat to resign as First Minister if there was no further progress towards decommissioning IRA arms. he said that Canadian General John de Chastelain - who wrote the IICD report on the arms issue to the Irish and British governments yesterday - should be in a position "to have some structured progress".
He said there was a need for "some certainty in the process, an indication that decommissioning is going to be dealt with in some ordered way."
As the talks continued, Sinn Féin's Mr Martin McGuinness warned today that suspension of the political institutions would be a "disaster of enormous proportions". He appealed to unionists to "keep their nerve".
"To be part of anything that would see the destruction of the hard-gotten
gains of recent times would be seen by the vast majority of our community
as very, very poor leadership," he said.
"The ordinary people out there that support the Good Friday Agreement
do think it's absolutely crazy for anyone to contemplate the destruction
of the Executive."
The Education Minister acknowledged it would be "very difficult" to persuade the IRA to stay in discussions with the General if the institutions were put on hold.
But the Sinn Féin leadership had put huge effort into the peace process over the past eight or nine years and would continue to do so, he said.
"What we will do in Sinn Féin is continue with the very positive and constructive approach that we have adopted right throughout the course of this peace process," he said. "We will not shirk our responsibilities."
But all parties had a collective responsibility to get all guns removed from the situation. "I would contend that the best way to do that is for us to keep the executive up, keep working and then let the armed groups face up to the challenge that politics working makes for them," Mr McGuinness added.