We want elections to go ahead, says Ulster secretary

The Britsh government wants elections to the Northern Ireland Assembly to go ahead, Ulster Secretary Paul Murphy insisted today.

As Sinn Féin president Gerry Adams and chief negotiator Martin McGuinness prepared to hold face-to-face talks in London with Ulster Unionist leader David Trimble and his colleague Michael McGimpsey, the Northern Ireland Secretary said the Government was not prepared to “throw in the towel” on efforts to revive the Assembly.

He declared: “We want an election to happen. We want the democratic process to go forward.

“But at the same time we want to make sure that people understand that an Assembly on its own isn’t the answer to the problems of the institutions.

“We have to have a Government as well.

“I am not going to pre-empt what is going to come out over the next couple of days and weeks with regards to the negotiations.

“Our view in the Government is clear: we want elections to happen but we equally say we are trying to ensure that we get an executive.

“I think to throw in the towel at an early stage and say we just want an Assembly and we will let the executive sort itself out isn’t being fair to the people of Northern Ireland. Nor is it right in terms of the Agreement itself.”

Mr Adams and Mr Trimble will be holding their fifth face-to-face talks since the latest bid to restore devolution intensified three weeks ago.

Northern Ireland’s Assembly and power sharing Government was suspended last October amid allegations of IRA spying.

Republicans have faced demands for them to wind down their paramilitary wing, the IRA.

In the spring, British Prime Minister Tony Blair cancelled Assembly elections four days into the campaign because he was dissatisfied with public assurances from the IRA and Gerry Adams that Republicans would not do anything to undermine the Good Friday Agreement.

The British and Irish Governments published a peace plan in May for the implementation of the Agreement, which required loyalists and republicans to give their support to an ending of all recruiting, training, targeting, intelligence gathering, weapons procurement and involvement in all violence.

Sources have claimed in recent days that the IRA has still to make clear whether it is prepared to sign up to Paragraph 13 in the joint declaration from London and Dublin, which deals with paramilitary activity.

Mr Murphy told BBC Radio Ulster today that he hoped the discussions between Sinn Féin and the Ulster Unionists would be fruitful.

“Like everybody else I want this process to move forward, including the elections, but what we also have to ensure is that we get a government in Northern Ireland too,” he said.

Mr Adams hardened his party’s demands today for an Assembly election date to be set, insisting republicans would not debate a gesture from the IRA without it.

The West Belfast MP said: “We have made it very, very clear that we are not going to the IRA until we get a date certain, publicly proclaimed, of an election.

“That is going to be the accelerator of the process.

“There is so much angst and anger in republicanism at the way the British Government rejected initiatives by the IRA leadership on the one hand and by me on the other and then they went on to compound all of that by cancelling the election.

“There might not be a lot in it for the IRA unless there has been a process and at the moment we don’t have a process. We don’t have elections in the way they need to be unequivocally set out.

“People need to have some sort of confidence that this British government is not going to take an a la carte attitude to the agreement and we need to have some sense of how policing powers are going to be transferred, the institutions are going to be sustained over the long term and issues like the Human Rights Commission, which is in a mess.”