Trimble blow as ally criticises monitoring body

A supporter of Ulster Unionist leader David Trimble claimed today the independent body for the Good Friday Agreement was “fatally flawed”.

In a blow for the UUP leader ahead of a crucial party meeting in Belfast tomorrow, former Mid Ulster Assembly member Billy Armstrong said proposals for the ceasefire monitoring commission offered “no genuine means” of excluding from government those parties with paramilitary links.

“I had hoped that the ceasefire monitoring body could have provided an effective means of holding Sinn Féin/IRA to account, providing sanctions against their continued terrorist activity,” he said.

“The draft agreement between our government and the Republic’s government is fatally flawed, offering no genuine means of excluding parties who have continuing links to terror groups.

“The governments have failed – yet again – to address the cancer at the very heart of the political process. There can be no accommodation between democracy and terror. Republicans must democratise or be excluded from government.”

Northern Ireland Secretary Paul Murphy unveiled plans yesterday for a four-member commission which would monitor the implementation of the Agreement and paramilitary ceasefires.

The commission will comprise former US intelligence chief Richard Kerr, ex-Metropolitan Police anti-terrorist squad head John Grieve, Lord Alderdice, who acted as Speaker in the Northern Ireland Assembly, and Joe Brosnan, who was a senior official in the Justice Department.

As well as scrutinising paramilitary activity, the body would examine if the British government is keeping to its promises on demilitarisation and whether parties in a devolved Assembly are honouring their pledge to pursue exclusively peaceful and democratic means.

Ulster Unionists have been divided over the proposed body and other proposals from the two governments which would enable paramilitaries who fled Northern Ireland during the Troubles to return without facing jail.

Three rebel MPs – Jeffrey Donaldson, David Burnside and the Reverend Martin Smyth – resigned the UUP whip at Westminster in June because the party’s ruling council would not reject the plans.

Their protest angered the UUP hierarchy which has launched disciplinary action.

Supporters of the three MPs have forced tomorrow’s meeting of the 900-member Ulster Unionist Council in a bid to stop the disciplinary moves.

London and Dublin hoped this week the international monitoring body would have allayed unionist concerns ahead of the meeting about the Irish government’s role.

However Mr Donaldson claimed it still gave Dublin a say in the internal affairs of the Northern Ireland Assembly.

Mr Donaldson also called on the UUP leadership to drop its disciplinary action, warning it could result in a “cataclysmic clash” with the MPs’ constituency associations.

Mr Armstrong has supported his leader in several battles with the Donaldson wing of the party since 1998.

UUP members will be watching closely to see if it marks the start of a stampede of other members of the Assembly group, once a loyal powerbase for Mr Trimble, against him.

Mr Armstrong said: “I have been consistent in my support for efforts to return accountable, inclusive, democratic government to this part of the United Kingdom.

“I am now convinced that the joint declaration and the monitoring body will not achieve this. They fail to send the message to the republican movement that its private army and continued paramilitary activities are not acceptable in a democratic society.

“We need a road map which will lead republicans to renounce terror in word and deed and this is not provided by the joint declaration or the monitoring body.”