IRA statement 'would have made difference'.
From THE IRISH NEWS July 16th, 1999
By William Graham Political Correspondent
THE Ulster Unionist Party last night said that if the IRA had decided to
make a statement this week, it could have gone a long way to improving the
possibility of finding a way forward. In an interview with the Irish News,
UUP senior negotiator Sir Reg Empey explained the reasoning behind his party
staying away from Stormont yesterday and refusing to nominate ministers
to a new executive. Mr Empey referred to the first motion down for business
in the assembly tabled by the DUP which called for the exclusion of Sinn
Fein from holding office as ministers for a period of 12 months. This motion
failed because it did not receive the necessary 30 signatures. According
to Mr Empey the UUP did not believe that an acrimonious debate about exclusion
should be taking place. "Such a debate could have lasted maybe eight hours and would not have contributed in any way towards resolving the problems." "We decided not to attend because we did not feel we wanted to be part of such a debate," Mr Empey said. He further explained that as the UUP was not going to nominate ministers it was pointless to attend; and the executive
in not achieving cross-community support would not be viable. "We made it clear to the government and others that we could not see any merit in going ahead yesterday as there was no consensus," Mr Empey said. Also, he contrasted
the way things were handled following the publication of the Hillsborough
Declaration and the Way Forward document. He said the republican movement
had repudiated the Hillsborough Declaration and then faced down the two
governments over this. "Having faced down the two governments the republican movement felt they could face down everybody else." On the way forward document
he said that his party had clearly come out in favour of the principle of
inclusive government. They had committed themselves to this. But Mr Empey
said that the republican movement had two weeks to accept the principle
of decommissioning but the silence on this had been deafening. He said that
Gerry Adams and Pat Doherty had made it clear there was no commitment given;
Sinn Féin had not changed it's policy; and they could not speak for the
IRA. "Ulster Unionists have been unable to establish any grounds for believing that a seismic shift has taken place." "Had the republican movement (the IRA) made a statement I believe it would have been taken very seriously by unionists and could have gone a long way to see a way forward." "Without that statement, and taking into account newspaper comments made by Mr Adams, we regard this as a two finger gesture on the decommissioning issue," Mr
Empey said. He said that while British prime minister Tony Blair tried hard
with the fail safe mechanisms - the whole package, taken together, fell
short of what was required. He added that the substance of what was on offer
was regarded as "fools gold". At the same time Mr Empey said he did not
share the doom and gloom analysis of what had happened yesterday and that
the Ulster Unionists Party would go into the review positively and with
the objective of resolving these issues. He said that he believed that the
Good Friday agreement still can work. |
