Republican News · Thursday 30 January 2003

Political will required to find way forward

Martin McGuinness was this week on a three-day trip to the United States. During his visit he spoke at several engagements organised by Friends of Sinn Féin. He delivered a keynote address on Equality in Education at the College of St Rose in Albany New York on Tuesday. On Wednesday travelled to Washington, where he briefed members of Congress on the current difficulties in the peace process and met with Ambassador Richard Haas in the State Department.

Speaking from the College of St Rose in Albany, Martin McGuinness said that political will is required to find a way out of the current political impasse and called for urgent movement from the British government to restore the political institutions it suspended in October.

"Thoe institutions need to be put back in place urgently," he said. "We are currently engaged in negotiations in an attempt to achieve this and I have no doubt that, if there is the political will to work together, we can find a way forward.

"There can be no renegotiation of the Good Friday Agreement, The Agreement must be implemented in full. We must see an end to political policing. Our society must be demilitarised, on all sides. There must be an end to discrimination, inequality and sectarianism. Human rights must become a reality for all our people. There is a particular onus on the British government to deliver on these obligations.

"Despite the recurring difficulties, substantial progress has been made. Only a very short time ago a vicious circle of injustice, inequality and conflict afflicted us in the north of Ireland. In a relatively short period of time the political landscape has been transformed and we have provided the hope, if not yet the certainty, that the failures and injustices of the past can be addressed effectively so that they will never be repeated."