Paisley pours scorn on the removal of articles 2 and 3
From NEWS LETTER December 3rd, 1999
THE two DUP ministers in the new executive, Peter Robinson and Nigel Dodds,
have defended their boycott of its first meeting. At a Stormont Press conference
timed to coincide with the cabinet get-together, they insisted they would
deal with the First Minister and his deputy, the Assembly and its committees
but would not sit down with Sinn Fein ministers. Party leader Ian Paisley,
sitting between the defiant duo, heaped scorn on the significance of changes
made to articles 2 and 3 of the Republic's constitution and on claims made
for the new British-Irish Agreement. Mr Robinson, who holds the regional
development portfolio, told reporters: ''Our manifesto commitment to the
people of Northern Ireland is that we would never sit down in government
with the representatives of armed terrorists, who have never to this day
expressed remorse for their actions.'' He said if Mr Trimble and Mr Mallon
did not like what he and Mr Dodds were doing, they could go to the Assembly
''and have us thrown out''. Mr Dodds, social development minister, said:
''The biggest betrayal of the last 30 years is taking place this afternoon
in Parliament Buildings.'' He castigated the ''spurious visionary nonsense''
from Dublin. It was wrong, he said, to claim that the 1985 Anglo- Irish
Agreement had gone - it had simply been renamed and the substance was there
in the new Agreement. Mr Paisley told the packed news conference: ''This
is not a daybreak, not a new dawn. ''This is a new night and one does not
know what the midnight will be. ''We have now spokesmen of the armed IRA
in government. They have, as ministers, access to very valuable security
information. ''They are there to forward one interest only: to break the
link between this part of the United Kingdom and the rest of the United
Kingdom.'' Mr Paisley said that the removal of the South's constitutional
claim was irrelevant in light of the other changes introduced. He said:
"Because the jurisdiction issue has been settled, the real objectives have been reached - and there is no need for articles 2 and 3 any more." |
