Taoiseach urged to recall peace forum

Bertie Ahern was today urged to recall a forum of political parties on both sides of the border to resolve the crisis over the future of the IRA.

As the Minister for Foreign Affairs Dermot Ahern prepared to meet Sinn Féin’s Martin McGuinness and SDLP leader Mark Durkan separately today in Derry following two IRA statements this week, Green Party leader Trevor Sargent called for calm and a reconvening of the National Forum for Peace and Reconciliation.

“It is important to take stock of the peace dividend reduced paramilitary violence has brought in the last decade,” the Dublin North TD said.

“If parties cannot work together, this is indeed serious. All can agree with the IRA statement on that point.

“However we would urge the IRA to agree, in turn, with the Green Party and almost every other party to the Good Friday Agreement, that the block to progress is the threat of violence and the capacity for violence.

“In this regard much depends on Sinn Féin and the IRA ending the option of armed struggle. We are now on a unfortunate round of game playing with accusations, blame and counter-blame clogging the airwaves.

“I am now calling on Taoiseach Bertie Ahern and all parties to seriously consider recalling the National Forum for Peace and Reconciliation.”

Earlier this week, nationalist SDLP Assembly member Sean Farren also urged the Irish Government to recall the forum, which last met in Dublin two years ago, to deal with the political fallout from December’s Northern bank raid.

Sinn Féin and the Government have been engaged in a bitter war of words over claims that the IRA was responsible.

Minister for Justice Michael McDowell has been particularly forthright in telling Sinn Féin there will be no place for them in government on either side of the border until criminality ends.

However in the first of two comments this week on the political crisis, the Provisionals in an official statement furiously denied they were involved in crime.

Last night an IRA source also accused British Prime Minister Tony Blair and Taoiseach Bertie Ahern’s Governments of making a mess of the process.

Sinn Féin, the SDLP, Northern Ireland’s cross-community Alliance Party and Women’s Coalition all took part in the Dublin-based Forum for Peace and Reconciliation when it last met.

Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael, Labour, the Progressive Democrats, the Greens, the Socialist party, the Workers’ Party and a group of independent TDs and senators all participated from the Republic.

Minister Dermot Ahern's meeting today with Martin McGuinness in Derry is the first between the Government and Sinn Féin since the two IRA statements.

As well as meeting the SDLP, Dermot Ahern was also due to talk to members of the Strabane and Derry District Policing Partnerships who have been targeted by hardline republicans for engaging with the police.