Unionists reject Agreement
Sinn Féin went to Stormont this week to rescue the Good Friday Agreement
after a year of unionist obstruction. The deadline set by British Prime
Minister Tony Blair for agreement on the way forward was breached but
efforts continued over the following 24 hours. Those efforts failed when
any scope for agreement was frustrated and eventually blocked by the Ulster
Unionists.
In the course of negotiations, Sinn Féin offered to stretch the republican
position to the limit within the context of the Good Friday Agreement. The
party stretched its position beyond what it was obliged to.
Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness offered to meet the UUP Assembly Party to
explain their proposals. They did meet the UUP negotiating team. They met
David Trimble and John Taylor and explained their proposals in detail. On
all occasions, Sinn Féin's efforts were spurned.
Sinn Féin's position has been consistent that the way forward must be in
the context of the Good Friday Agreement. This was what the Irish people in
massive numbers North and South endorsed as a peaceful way forward out of
armed conflict and by which the causes of that conflict could start to be
addressed. It was an Agreement to which the Ulster Unionist Party claimed
to be committed.
Over the last six years, the UUP was brought reluctantly into the peace
process, reluctantly into negotiations and just as reluctantly to the Good
Friday Agreement. In this context, its blocking of the implementation of
the Agreement is entirely consistent. Trimble and the UUP's failure to take
on the anti-Agreement elements within their own ranks lies behind this
week's political failure.
Prior decommissioning was never achievable and was not a provision of the
Good Friday Agreement. Neither was it within the gift of Sinn Féin to
deliver. Both the Taoiseach and the British Prime Minister accepted that
this was the case.
With or without the Agreement, human rights, equality, justice, an
acceptable policing service and many other issues addressed by the
Agreement are the direct responsibility of the British government for as
long as it claims jurisdiction over the Six Counties. The Dublin government
also has a responsibility to uphold the rights of Irish citizens in the
North, particularly the rights of nationalists who are living under daily
and violent threat.
The backdrop to this week's failure of political negotiations is one of
increasing loyalist violence. It is a backdrop of isolated nationalist
communities in the North under siege from Orange sectarianism, including
the people of the Garvaghy Road, who face into another Drumcree this
weekend. It is a situation which the Good Friday Agreement was designed to
put behind us. That Agreement and the hopes of the Irish people North and
South have been rejected by the unionists. The British and Irish governments
must now seize the initiative to save the process.
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