Trimble to meet Blair after review walkout
Ulster Unionist leader David Trimble was meeting the British Prime Minister today in a bid to get Sinn Féin thrown out of the talks seeking to restore devolution to Northern Ireland.
He walked out of the review of the workings of the Good Friday Agreement yesterday because Ulster Secretary Paul Murphy and Minister John O’Donoghue failed to give him what he wanted – Sinn Féin’s marching orders.
Refusing to kick Sinn Féin out of the talks following the alleged IRA abduction and beating of dissident Bobby Tohill last month was “quite appalling,” he said.
Mr Trimble added: “We have to show to paramilitaries our Government will not tolerate such blatant breaches of the peace.”
The British Prime Minister had talks with Sinn Féin leaders Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness in London yesterday and there has been little or no sign he will do anything to give Mr Trimble what he wants.
Despite withdrawing from the review talks, Mr Trimble said the UUP would continue to talk to other parties about the general political situation and the paramilitary threat.
Yesterday’s talks had a single agenda – at unionist insistence – of continuing IRA activity.
Sinn Féin was furious at the single agenda and hit out at Mr Trimble for walking out.
West Belfast Assembly member Bairbre de Brun – leading the Sinn Féin delegation in the absence of Mr Adams and Mr McGuinness – accused him of engaging in “posturing without substance”.
She added: “This is part of Mr Trimble’s competition with the Democratic Unionist Party. He is attempting to compete with the DUP on Ian Paisley’s ground. It is a wrong approach.”
Maybe if Mr Trimble had been as exercised about the recent murder of a young Catholic in Lisburn or attack last week by loyalist paramilitaries on a 105-year-old woman in North Belfast, people would take his actions more seriously, she said.
She insisted: “The reality is that the IRA poses no threat to the peace process.”
Mr Trimble’s arch critic, MP Jeffrey Donaldson, who left the UUP early this year to join the DUP, accused him of allowing the IRA to dictate party strategy.
He said Mr Trimble had in the past criticised the DUP for not participating in talks and was now doing the same himself.
“David Trimble is a poor man’s Ian Paisley,” said Mr Donaldson.
While the UUP withdrawal will be a blow to the Government, it should not collapse the review process.
Mr Trimble’s party is not the power it was – the November Assembly elections saw it relegated below Ian Paisley’s hard-liners as the major voice of unionism.
And in a twist on times past it is the DUP that is staying put in the discussions.
