THE Sinn Fein president, Mr Gerry Adams, said yesterday that the British Prime Minister, Mr Major, must show he would not treat a second IRA cessation as he did the last one.
Apparently raising the possibility of another IRA ceasefire, Mr Adams said Sinn Fein was "prepared to go the extra mile for peace. He added: "Obviously, peace negotiations . . . are best held in a peaceful environment."
However, both phrases have been used previously by Mr Adams and other Sinn Fein spokesmen, and the Sinn Fein president yesterday placed the onus for progress on Mr Major.
Addressing party activists in north Belfast, Mr Adams accused the British government of having sought to "micro manage" the peace process following the IRA cessation in August 1994. It had sought to reduce the momentum for change so that the dynamic could be controlled by London, he claimed.
"Mr Major and his advisers calculated that if the peace process was stretched and stretched and stretched the IRA would find it impossible to go back to war," he said. "In other words the IRA would be defeated. The British would then only have to make the minimal changes necessary to underpin this new situation."
However, he continued, Mr Major had miscalculated and had stretched the process to breaking point on a number of occasions until eventually it had snapped. The subsequent creation of a "some party talks process" was little more than a tactical wrangle, serving the agenda for further delay and for avoiding rather than tackling the substantive issues.
Mr Adams said a viable peace process had to be inclusive, with no preconditions, and with a timeframe to provide the dynamic and momentum to focus minds and produce agreement".
"Mr Major must show that he will not treat a second IRA cessation and a restored peace process in the same cavalier fashion as he did the last one," Mr Adams said.
He said the unionists were afraid of change: "In ways the loyalist parties have shown more openness and imagination than the mainstream unionist leaders hips." Neither Mr David Trimble nor the Rev Ian Paisley would engage in meaningful negotiations until the British government did, he asserted.
He said there were clearly some elements within the loyalist camp which genuinely wished to see an end to the conflict, and they should be encouraged. "The others and their cheerleaders should also know that they could not intimidate Sinn Fein in the past. They will not do so in the future," he added.
The leadership of Sinn Fein remained ready and willing to meet any of the other parties in an effort to find a way beyond this critical phase, Mr Adams said.
The Dungannon priest, Monsignor Denis Faul, yesterday called on loyalist and republican paramilitary groups to unite to bring a permanent end to violence. He said the two groups aims were similar, in that they were both striving for political negotiations and the release of prisoners, so a logical step would be a joint initiative.