Hain under fire as Stormont stand-off continues
Nationalist SDLP leader Mark Durkan lambasted the minister after the inaugural meeting of Stormont’s preparation for government committee broke up without agreement on who should chair it.
Mr Durkan emerged from the meeting, accusing the DUP of refusing to engage with other parties and acting as if they had a veto.
“At times, during the meeting the DUP talked about their understandings from the secretary of state and with the secretary of state,” the Foyle MP said.
“But the secretary of state came to this process with the silly belief that we could all have confidence in the DUP. While he has been writing positive references for the DUP, saying they were willing and ready to engage, they are content that they can stop this committee even though some of their members originally canvassed the idea.
“It is frustrating that they couldn’t even let the committee do its primary work. The secretary of state needs to now finally realise that he came to this mistakenly believing the DUP were serious, even though we warned against this long ago.”
Unionists and nationalists, however, clashed on the committee about who its chair should be.
The Rev Ian Paisley’s Democratic Unionists proposed Assembly Speaker Eileen Bell, but she is believed to have turned their suggestion down.
Sinn Féin chief negotiator Martin McGuinness suggested the chairmanship should either be jointly chaired by his party and the DUP or rotated between the parties. Afterwards an exasperated David Ford, the leader of the cross community Alliance Party, who at one stage was mooted as the committee chairman, said the British and Irish governments needed to reassess their approach to efforts to revive power sharing.
“We in Alliance had reservations about the value of the committee but we attended to do a job for the people we represent,” the South Antrim MLA said.
“But we will not take on other people’s jobs for them. There are many issues to be covered, there are genuine difficulties to recognise and all parties have a duty to take their share of responsibility.
“The government strategy of trying to arrange a quick fix between the DUP and Sinn Féin has been blown out of the water.
“If they cannot even agree on how to chair a meeting, what hope is there that they will agree to form an executive within the next six months?”
With British Prime Minister Tony Blair and Taoiseach Bertie Ahern due to travel to Belfast at the end of the month to spearhead two days of talks with the parties, Mr Hain set up the preparation for government committee to identify what issues needed to be addressed if power sharing is to return.
