End to arms key to talks, says Trimble

THERE is little point in proceeding with multi-party talks in the North if the IRA refuses to address the need to give up all paramilitary activity, Ulster Unionist leader David Trimble, insisted last night.

In a hard-hitting statement issued after a meeting in Downing Street with the British prime minister Tony Blair, Mr Trimble warned unionist patience has been exhausted.

He also argued that people in the North wanted the republican movement to end its “love affair with the gun”. Mr Trimble was accompanied at the meeting by former Stormont ministers Reg Empey and Michael McGimpsey and North Down MP Lady Sylvia Hermon. Mr Trimble said: “Our discussions served to underline the need to maintain pressure on republicans to undertake ‘acts of completion’.

“We are not seeking great-sounding words or gestures, but finality.”

While Mr Trimble insisted his party wants the return of devolution and to see the power-sharing institutions restored, he insisted that, for that to happen, republicans would have to abandon “their bad old ways”.

The former Northern Ireland First Minister said: “If that isn’t forthcoming, then the onus will be on the prime minister to do the decent thing. We encouraged him to have ready a range of sanctions, including exclusion, in response to any foot-dragging or failure by republicans.

“It is they who must create stability and agree to never place the institutions at risk again.

“We need proof, not promises. We need action, not more aspirations. And we need it sooner rather than later.”

Mr Trimble’s hard-hitting statement followed an equally uncompromising speech in Belfast from Sinn Féin president, Gerry Adams. The West Belfast MP told a public meeting in Fitzroy Presbyterian Church on Monday night that multi-party talks aimed at restoring devolution had made little headway.

“So far in our efforts to bring back the institutions, there has been no substantive progress,” he said.

“And there will not be until the British and Irish Governments come forward with time-framed programmatic implementation plans for those aspects of the Good Friday Agreement which are their responsibility.”

Sinn Féin has argued that further moves by Mr Blair on policing, security normalisation, equality, human rights and the Irish language could create the context for an end to paramilitarism.

However, Mr Adams attacked unionists for their focus on IRA activity when loyalist paramilitaries were carrying out regular acts of violence.