Reid's insults won't wash
BY MICHAEL PIERSE
The comments made by British Secretary of State John Reid this week are not only a portent of further difficulties, if not disaster, in the peace process, but they are also a sign that the British/unionist axis has been strengthened by his appointment.
Reid made his outburst in an interview with the Boston Globe on Tuesday 20 March. Warning that the peace process was entering a ``critical phase'', the British minister said that progress could not be achieved while, he claimed, Sinn Féin negotiators have ``guns under the table''.
``Protestants know that the negotiating partner still has a gun under the table,'' he said. ``It is a large step forward that he is not shooting at you but the next step is that he leaves the gun in the next room.''
Throughout the interview Reid mentioned nothing of policing, demilitarisation, loyalist weapons, loyalist attacks or the attempts by unionism to subvert the Good Friday Agreement.
His comments were insultingly simplistic and misleading, portraying the British government as the honest broker, the school teacher-type figure who is earnestly trying to sort it all out? If this is the false scenario of Reid's agenda, then he might as well give up and go home.
Sinn Féin's Gerry Kelly reacted strongly this week. ``John Reid's comments are of no assistance to the peace process,'' he said. ``The fact of the matter is that it is totally unhelpful and entirely disingenuous of John Reid or anybody else to attempt to blame the problems currently dogging the peace process on republican weapons.'' Kelly said Reid would be better employed concentrating on living up to the obligations his government signed up to in the Good Friday Agreement and which they again reiterated in May of last year.
The decision of the British government to quash warrants for the arrest of eight republican activists `on the run' this week was, however, cautiously welcomed by Sinn Féin. The party's vice-president, Pat Doherty, said the move represented a ``step forward'' in tackling the issue of outstanding warrants against republicans but urged that all outstanding cases be dealt with.
``This is a useful step in tackling an important issue. It will come as a relief to the individuals involved and their families,'' he said. ``We are in a process of conflict resolution and this issue needs to be sorted out. There was an acknowledgement by the British Government last year that this anomaly had arisen in light of the Good Friday Agreement but it needs to be addressed in its entirety.''
Meanwhile, Doherty said, republicans are deeply frustrated at the recent antics of UUP leader David Trimble. ``Republicans have honoured all of the commitments they made under the Good Friday Agreement. It is David Trimble and the British government who have dishonoured the commitments they entered into.
``The British government, by its failure to challenge his actions, is encouraging unionist intransigence and inflexibility. If the crisis in the Peace Process is to be resolved then the British government has to grasp the nettle. They have to implement Patten, produce a pro-active programme of demilitarisation and instruct David Trimble to stop acting unlawfully.''
Implementation of the Patten Report may be fast becoming a vacant aspiration, with RUC Chief Constable, Ronnie Flanagan, unveiling a list of tacit `reforms' to his organisation this week. The new RUC structures, which represent no fundamental change to the organisation, were rubbished by Sinn Féin's policing spokesperson, Gerry Kelly, this week.
``The nationalist community will not support a repackaged RUC,'' Kelly said. ``It is an unacceptable paramilitary force. The test is whether the British Government is willing to confront its system to realise the commitments they undertook on Good Friday, because the chief resistance to change on the central issue has emanated not from the unionists but from the securocrats in the British system.''
![[An Phoblacht]](http://republican-news.org/graphics/title_gifs/aprn.gif)