Early days for auditor suggestion

Another meeting of the Ulster Unionist Council looms, so invariably another proposition is on the table to bolster First Minister David Trimble’s permanently tenuous position as the majority Unionist leader.

This time around, he wants an auditor appointed to monitor paramilitary ceasefires, something which the British Government is considering and which Mr Trimble will be advocating when he meets President Bush’s special adviser on Northern Ireland, Richard Haass, today.

Mr Trimble has another crucial meeting with the UUC tomorrow week, and the idea of a ceasefires auditor, first mooted by Alliance, is the latest in a series of gambits he has produced to keep Unionists’ confidence in the peace process.

The idea was rejected out of hand by an IRA spokesman in an interview in the republican newspaper, An Phoblacht, yesterday.

In the same interview, the IRA denied it sanctioned any operation in Colombia, or that it was responsible for the break-in at Castlereagh barracks.

Insofar as the concept of a ceasefires auditor is concerned, the idea has not been developed beyond the suggestion stage at the moment, so the republicans may have been a bit precipitate in turning it down.

The Northern Secretary, Dr John Reid, has already indicated that he is prepared to deal with breaches of the ceasefires in a more transparent way, and it is possible that an auditor might fit in with what he is considering.

Whatever transpires, it is highly unlikely that anybody other than the Northern Secretary will have the ultimate decision on what the status of any ceasefire will be.