Good Friday deal is 'pattern for future': Reid
Northern Ireland Secretary John Reid tonight held up the Good Friday Agreement on Ulster as a pattern for future progress.
At a meeting of Irish and British politicians in Bournemouth, he said that if the accord were implemented in full it promised the same rights and respect for everyone in the province.
Mr Reid said the Agreement, signed after protracted negotiations in 1998, and recently advanced by the impetus of the IRA arms decommissioning process, had to be the ‘‘golden thread’’ for everything done from now on.
The Secretary of State told a session of the British-Irish Interparliamentary Body:
"If we are to challenge confrontational politics, we must challenge the notion that there are always winners and losers.
‘‘Our template must be the Good Friday Agreement. It promises the same rights and respect for all parts of the community - not as nationalist or unionist, republican or loyalist, but as citizens.
‘‘This agreement, the high-water mark of Anglo-Irish relations, was the culmination of years of work and a gradual shift in our thinking.’’
Dr Reid, who earlier today had talks in Dublin with Minister for Foreign Affairs Brian Cowen, also underscored the need to ‘‘root and destroy sectarianism, wherever it is found.
‘‘There are still deep wounds that cannot be healed by constitutional change alone. Like the all-too-frequent paramilitary attacks that inflict terrible suffering and mock the principles of fairness and justice.
‘‘Like the arson attacks that wreck lives, wreck homes and deny whole communities their basic right to live free of fear.’’
‘‘We cannot place a sticking plaster over these sores and hope that they go away - because the problems - and the answers - lie in the very bedrock of this country.’’
Dr Reid was delivering his first address to the inter-parliamentary body, established in 1990 to boost relations between British and Irish politicians.
The organisations has been extended to embrace representatives from the Scottish and Welsh Assemblies, as well as the Isle of Man and Channel Island administrations.
Dr Reid later said he expected soon to meet a Dublin judge heading an inquiry into terrorist bombings in Dublin and Monaghan more than 25 years ago.
The British government has run into criticism in Dublin for allegedly failing to hand over documents relating to the attacks by Northern Ireland loyalist paramilitaries in which more than 30 people died in one night in 1974, to the investigation being chaired by High Court judge Mr Justice Henry Barron.
He said tonight: ‘‘We want to be as helpful as possible in this. That is why we have embarked on a trawl of documents and that is what has taken the time.
‘‘We want to be sure we have looked through all the documentation to see what might be and what might not be relevant.
‘‘We are getting to the end of that trawl now. I think a date should be set for a meeting and I would anticipate it would not be later than early in the New Year.’’
