The Unionists are in Default - Sun.Biz.Post 6/feb Tue, 8 Feb 2000 02:51:44 -0500 Via NY Transfer News * All the News That Doesn't Fit source - "Sean MacCoinnigh" A Chairde: A strong editorial from the Sunday Business Post. Wouldn't it be great if all the self-perceived "activists" out there would actually *do* some activating for a change by printing out the text of this editorial and sending it to traditionally Anglophilic editors and broadcasters here in country which the president of William & Mary still proudly views as a colony? "Activists" from Philadelphia and environs should inundate the Inquirer. Maybe it would give Mr Joyce, the token, wee Irish-American on the editorial board, the grit to stand up to his Brit-lick colleagues for once. Black Jack THE UNIONISTS ARE IN DEFAULT The Dublin government would be most foolish to assist Britain in suspending the six county executive, if that emerges as the chosen course of action of Tony Blair and Peter Mandelson next week. Hysterical pressure has been built up in recent days for just such a suspension. Without exception, all of the criticism has been directed at the republican movement. Yet any fair-minded reading of the agreements entered into in 1998 and since will show that Sinn Fein is not in any sense in default in relation to its obligations. Sinn Fein's only obligation is to use its influence to promote what is called `decommissioning' as part of a much wider process. To assist in suspending the institutions set up under the terms of the Belfast Agreement would be to renege on contractual commitments, merely to cope with the inadequacies of the UUP leadership in managing its supporters. The reality is that it is David Trimble who is collapsing the institutions: why should Blair and Ahern facilitate him in concealing this reality? Neither is there any evidence that leaders of Sinn Fein gave any commitment at all in relation to decommissioning during the so-called Mitchell Review. The idea of actual decommissioning by January appears to have been part of some UUP wish-list during the Mitchell Review. But the expression of a natural wish by unionists for decommissioning is not the same as a republican commitment to decommission, no matter how the issue is twisted in various quarters. The decision of UUP leader Trimble to revert to the old politics of `stating positions and presenting demands' is =AD as we stated here in late November =AD absolutely guaranteed to lead to a major crisis. It is very difficult for republicans to deal with the issue of decommissioning for one very straightforward reason, a reason that has nothing to do with real or imagined splits in the republican movement. Simply, the destruction or handing over of its arsenal by the IRA would mean =AD in practical terms =AD the dissolution or liquidation of the IRA. It is quite absurd to believe that the IRA would agree to such a course of action in response to a UUP ultimatum. Neither is it at all realistic to expect that material progress will be made towards the goal of partial demilitarisation by the IRA while progress made in changing the political and security situation in the six counties is still at an early or embryonic stage. The appointment by the IRA of an interlocutor to deal with de Chastelain is in itself a remarkable and positive development as is the unstated acceptance of the idea of a permanent peace that is implicit in recent IRA statements. It is most unlikely this weapons issue can be fudged. Indeed, it would be absolutely wrong for anyone to attempt to fudge it. The leaders of the modern republican movement have been absolutely up-front about the weapons issue in their dealings with unionists, with the two governments and with their own supporters. The problem is that there would appear to have been two deals approved in May 1998: the one in Trimble's head and the one written in the actual Belfast Agreement and presented to all the people of this island. ================================================================= NY Transfer News Collective * A Service of Blythe Systems Since 1985 - Information for the Rest of Us 339 Lafayette St., New York, NY 10012 http://www.blythe.org e-mail: nyt@blythe.org ================================================================= nytire-02.08.00-02:51:46-7341