SDLP urges speedy resumption of devolution talks

THE SDLP has called for a speedy resumption of talks on implementing the Good Friday Agreement and restoring devolution.

The Irish and British governments have said Independent Monitoring Commission (IMC) reports due in October and January will help them decide if the IRA is honouring its promise to abandon paramilitary and criminal activity.

The belief is that the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) will not consider talks with Sinn Féin until both reports are published.

SDLP leader Mark Durkan, speaking after a meeting with Taoiseach Bertie Ahern yesterday, urged all sides not to wait that long.

“I think it’s important that neither parties nor governments decide there’s nothing we can do until the New Year, [that] we just mark time, because other difficulties will arise if they do that,” he said.

“There is work that we can all do now.”

This included making progress on policing, planning an “even more positive and active North-South agenda” and preparing for the restoration of the institutions. The SDLP would continue working towards those goals, he said.

“We don’t see ourselves standing back, waiting to see what’s in the IMC’s report in January, and then waiting to see whether or not the DUP and Sinn Féin are talking.”

However, Mr Durkan, flanked at the press briefing in Government Buildings by colleagues Alasdair McDonnell, Eddie McGrady, Sean Farren, Alex Attwood and Carmel Hanna, refused to speculate on when the institutions would resume.

“Prophecy is the most gratuitous form of error, we are told, and the problem in this process is that the ‘going rate’ has become ‘going slow’. And I know that there is an attitude in the DUP that says, ‘Well, David Trimble and the UUP were allowed to create a lot of delays in this process and nobody shifted them on too much. Sinn Féin and the IRA have both been allowed to drag their feet at different stages of this process, so who’s going to rush us now?’

“I just hope the DUP don’t think that they can take as par for the course now all the delays that were tolerated and allowed by the two governments in the past.”

Mr Durkan said Sinn Féin would have to address any perceived ambiguities in the IRA statement to ensure the DUP did not have an excuse to stall the process.

“In case people have any doubts that there is some implicit conditionality, I would hope that the IRA and the Sinn Féin leadership could remove any such doubts on anybody’s part, because to even talk up such doubts just becomes an excuse for the DUP and others to stall it,” he said.