Review of Agreement begins today
A bid to restore devolution to Northern Ireland with a review of the Good Friday Agreement was getting under way today.
The British and Irish governments will jointly chair the discussions in Belfast which will involve all the parties elected to the Stormont Assembly last November.
The talks could run until Easter and Ulster Secretary Paul Murphy hinted yesterday that if they fail fresh elections could be called by June.
That would be a last ditch effort to change the party representation which emerged after the November elections.
Then, the Rev Ian Paisley’s hard-line Democratic Unionists ended up as the largest party and Sinn Féin outstripped the SDLP for the majority of nationalist support.
As the talks were due to start, US President George W Bush’s new special adviser on Northern Ireland, Mitchell Reiss, was holding a round of discussions with the political parties.
Mr Reiss, who replaces long-running special envoy Richard Haass, is making his first visit to Northern Ireland since being formally confirmed in the post at the weekend.
He is meeting all the local parties before travelling to London and Dublin for discussions with the British and Irish governments.
Inside the review at Stormont, the DUP will propose radical reforms to the Good Friday Agreement.
They want a smaller Assembly, less departments and major changes to the way Northern Ireland is ruled.
And later this week the party is due to publish proposals which could let Sinn Féin join new power-sharing arrangements but prevent them wielding real power until the IRA disarms and stands down.
Its plan, to be given to Tony Blair on Thursday, will involve a system under which power would rest with the 108-strong Assembly as a whole rather than the 12 ministers who governed Northern Ireland before devolution collapsed in October 2002 amid allegations of an IRA spy ring at Stormont.
It would give Gerry Adams’ party a say in how the North is run but prevent Sinn Féin exercising executive power as they did with the education and health portfolios prior to the reintroduction of direct rule.
But Sinn Féin and the SDLP insist the review should not be treated as a renegotiation of the Agreement and that the two governments should make it clear to the DUP that while the Agreement is up for review it is not up for rewriting.
London and Dublin face an uphill struggle to rebuild devolution amid the distrust and suspicion which dogs Northern Ireland politics, but determined to return power to local politicians they will do their best.
Arriving in Belfast last night, Mr Reiss said he was on a “listen and learn” mission, would monitor the progress of the review talks and stand ready to return whenever his presence would be helpful.
He said while there had been an end to widespread terrorist violence there was “understandable frustration that it has not been possible to establish stable devolved government”.
Hitting out at the paramilitary activity that does continue from both republicans and loyalists, he said it “ruins people’s lives and harms Northern Ireland’s reputation – all this must stop”.
