Sinn Féin and DUP 'will do business'

Doing business with the Rev Ian Paisley‘s Democratic Unionists at some stage in the future is inevitable, Sinn Féin party president Gerry Adams claimed today.

With all sides in Northern Ireland due to hold critical talks with British Prime Minister Tony Blair later this month in a bid to restore the power-sharing executive in Belfast, Mr Adams admitted there were huge difficulties to overcome.

But at Westminster today he declared: “I want to make it clear that I don’t rule out progress because I think it is inevitable that ourselves and the DUP will do business, but I can’t tell you when, because that is up to them.”

Mr Blair and Taoiseach Bertie Ahern will be meeting all the Northern Ireland political parties at Leeds Castle, Maidstone, Kent, on September 16/17.

The executive was suspended in October 2002 amid Unionist claims of an IRA spy ring operating inside government buildings at Stormont.

Mr Paisley has already warned the republican leadership that the Provisionals will have to decommission all their guns before his party will enter into any power-sharing arrangement. The IRA has carried out three acts of disarmament, but details have never been disclosed.

Mr Adams said: “We are there (Leeds Castle) to try and get a comprehensive, definitive conclusion. We want to see a package put together which drags this process on, and we will do our best. There are a number of huge difficulties… including the unwillingness of political Unionism and elements within the British system to embrace the type of changes which are required.

“The DUP have been honest – they want to destroy the Good Friday Agreement. So if you ask me for my expectation, if the publicly expressed position of the DUP is to destroy the Good Friday Agreement, then the prospects of progress in terms of seeing that Agreement implemented are totally reliant upon a British government bringing the Unionists through the pain barrier of reconciling themselves, or coming to tolerate a new dispensation.”

Mr Adams added: “I want to make it clear that I don’t rule out progress because I think it is inevitable that ourselves and the DUP will do business, but I can’t tell you when, because that is up to them.”

Mr Adams was asked whether there was no prospect of a power-sharing executive involving both Sinn Féin and the DUP being restored until the whole disarmament issue is resolved.

Mr Adams said: “That is certainly the stated position of the DUP. It is contrary to the Good Friday Agreement.

“It is a matter of whether the Agreement prevails or whether the DUP position prevails, and that again is a question for the Taoiseach and the British Prime Minister.

“The issue of arms has to be dealt with. I want to see it dealt with.

“The Agreement established a Commission to do just that, and made it very very clear that that was not a precondition for the holding of ministerial office or for the recognition of democratic mandates.”

Mr Blair and Mr Ahern will be pushing hard for some sort of settlement at Leeds Castle and the talks may even drift into a third day, September 18.

The big fear in London and Dublin is that, unless they get agreement then, it could be spring next year before there is any likelihood of a deal being reached.

Apart from weapons, there are a number of other key issues to be resolved, including Sinn Féin signing up to the new policing arrangements.

Mr Adams said it was up to the Democratic Unionists to prove the strength of their case – across the negoiating table.

Mr Adams added: “The DUP, while they will work with us, because they are forced to in local councils, and when the Assembly was in position they worked with us there as well of course in committees, and they now debate with us in TV studios, but getting three or four DUP people to sit down in a room with three or four of us and discuss out all of these matters has so far been impossible.

“Now it is my view that that will inevitably happen, but it is a very very slow process and it shows a marked lack of confidence on behalf of the DUP that they don’t have the courage of their convictions. If they are right, if they believe they are right, why don’t they come down and persuade us of the strength of their case?”