Ulster leaders to visit Ground Zero

The leaders of Northern Ireland’s power-sharing government were today preparing to pay tribute to the victims of last September’s terror attacks on the United States during a visit to the rubble of the World Trade Centre.

Stormont First Minister David Trimble and Deputy First Minister Mark Durkan were laying a wreath in memory of the September 11 victims during a visit to the Ground Zero site where New York’s Twin Towers once stood.

The Ulster Unionist leader and his counterpart in the nationalist SDLP were also planning to meet New York firemen who took part in efforts to rescue people caught in the September 11 attacks.

Mr Trimble and Mr Durkan are on a week-long visit to the United States during which they will also travel to Washington DC for the opening of an office on behalf of the Northern Ireland government.

They will also hold talks with senior figures in the Bush administration.

The two leaders’ visit to the US began with a debate at the World Economic Forum in Manhattan where they shared a platform with Sinn Fein president Gerry Adams, loyalist Assemblyman David Ervine, President Bush’s adviser on Northern Ireland Richard Haass and former talks chairman Senator George Mitchell.

During the debate on the peace process, Mr Trimble warned delegates that despite the progress which had been made under the Good Friday Agreement there could be a ‘‘serious problem’’ at the next Assembly elections if unionist alienation was not addressed.

Acknowledging support for the Agreement among unionists was being chiselled away, the Upper Bann MP said there was a sense that some nationalists were using the accord as a ‘‘battering ram’’ to hollow out any sense of Britishness.

The Upper Bann MP observed: ‘‘There are in a number of localities quite real social and economic problems. Particularly in north and west Belfast the experience of the Protestant community over the last 20 years has been one of, in their mind, relative disadvantage.

‘‘They attribute it to a deliberate policy by the British Government but I think it is more neglect rather than being deliberate but there has been a significant element of disadvantage there.

‘‘Then they also see in terms of its presentation and stance, aggressive republicanism which they perceive to be a threat to them. They perceive that to be a threat to them.’’

Mr Durkan insisted unionists and nationalists needed to break the cycle of a gain for one community meant a loss for the other.

The leader of the nationalist SDLP told a 60-strong audience: ‘‘We need to be very clear when we talk about equality that we are talking about reaching equality not by subtraction, not by division, but by all the multipliers the Agreement can give us and by adding on and reinforcing each other.’’

Mr Durkan acknowledged some unionists had supported the Agreement in spite of deep reservations about ‘‘imperfect ceasefires’’ and Sinn Fein ministers being able to take office in the absence of IRA decommissioning.

In a swipe at Sinn Fein’s stance on policing, he observed that while unionists had put their reservations aside: ‘‘Other people are being told: ‘No, we are still rejecting it because it is still not perfect yet’.

‘‘People feel there are double standards there. Those are the things that irritate people and aggravate people and those are the type of things that are latched on by anti-Agreement elements.’’

Mr Durkan was also due to take part in a major SDLP event in Wall Street today, briefing business and political leaders and prominent Irish Americans on the state of the peace process.