Northern Agreement - Ambiguity threatens fragile peace

It is frustrating to consider that a question of semantics may be restraining progress in Northern Ireland’s peace process.

Yesterday, British Prime Minister Tony Blair said that the IRA statement was not clear and not unambiguous as far as the Irish and British governments and the US administration were concerned.

To that end, he enumerated three questions relating to the organisation’s commitment to end all activities, to put all its arms beyond use and its position on a final closure of the conflict.

Eliciting an answer in the positive to all three, in whatever manner of words it chose once they were clear, could ease a way through the current impasse for the implementation of the Good Friday Agreement.

Conversely, Sinn Féin’s chief negotiator, Martin McGuinness said he believed the IRA’s statement was clear and unambiguous. Sinn Féin maintains that the insistence on demanding clarity from the IRA is solely to allow David Trimble return to the next meeting of the Ulster Unionist Council in a mood of triumphalism ahead of the election deadline.

Mr Trimble’s tentative relationship with the influential UUC has led to the suspension of the institutions previously and the introduction of conditions which did not exist in the Agreement.

While this wrangle over words is continuing, time is drifting ever closer to the Assembly elections at the end of next month, which the Irish Government is insisting should go ahead as planned.

The position of UUP leader David Trimble is clear in that it would be pointless to hold the Stormont elections unless the current situation was resolved.

He has made it clear that an Assembly elected under the present circumstances would not work, and the unionists would not take any steps to make it work.

Possibly, it might clear the air if the two governments now published the proposals they were ready to put before the pro-Agreement parties and what exactly the IRA statement to them said.