Durkan: 'Paralysing Stormont punishes public not paramilitaries'

British Prime Minister Tony Blair was today warned not to damage the devolved political institutions in Northern Ireland when he speaks in the House of Commons next week.

Deputy First Minister Mark Durkan said the achievements of the Stormont Assembly were the true reflection of the success of the peace process.

‘‘Paralysing government punishes the public not the paramilitaries,’’ the leader of the nationalist SDLP said.

‘‘I believe we must first affirm the absolute primacy of the institutions.

‘‘That means making clear that no party can respond to its own internal pressures or paramilitary wrongdoing by threatening to turn the lights out on our new democratic institutions of government.’’

However, Mr Durkan also called on both the British and Irish governments to be more honest about paramilitary violence.

‘‘When they know that paramilitaries are engaged in wrongdoing - even falling short of breaking their ceasefires - they should call it as they see it,’’ he said.

‘‘Simply turning a blind eye only encourages the paramilitaries to believe that they can get away with what they like.’’

Delivering a keynote address at the Jean Kennedy Symposium in New Ross, Co Wexford, Mr Durkan said he hoped some victims would be able to draw some comfort from this week’s IRA apology for causing civilian casualties.

However, he pointed out that the apology was limited to ‘‘non-combatants’’: ‘‘Clearly, other killings are still regarded as ‘legitimate’. It is a grim concept and one deployed not just by republicans, but by all those guilty of submerging our island in violence.’’

He added: ‘‘We are in this process to write a better future, not to re-write the past. There never was such thing as a legitimate target. Not for loyalists. Not for the IRA. Not for the British government.

‘‘There should never have been any targets at all. Thirty years of violence begot only greater distrust and division and left us with a legacy of bitterness that still threatens to engulf us to this day.

The Foyle MLA said removing sectarian bitterness is the greatest challenge currently facing the province.

‘‘It requires the establishment of trust where little exists. That can only be done by continuing to work together. To work the agreement.

‘‘For the agreement provided for the first time in our history an agreed basis arrived at freely between nationalists and unionists for sharing the island. In short, it realised the SDLP’s goal of an agreed Ireland.’’