Deal will not bring a lasting peace, RSF says

The Belfast Agreement will not bring "the just and lasting peace we desire, no more than did the treaty of surrender in 1922", the leader of Republican Sinn Fein has said.

Launching his party's campaign for a No vote in both referendums on May 22nd, Mr Ruairi O Bradaigh said a Yes vote on the Belfast Agreement "will not save us from more Drumcrees and more Harryvilles, no matter how the political parties and others seek to delude us.

"With a nationalist population growing in numbers, self-confidence and economic power, the fears of the British-backed loyalists are certain to be raised. Given the record to date, they will respond the way they always have - by killing uninvolved nationalists at random, as we have seen just last week."

The agreement was a "holding operation" for Britain which would sentence more generations of Irish people to conflict, he said.

"By voting No, we will force the British government back to the drawing board and force it to face up to the real situation now rather than after 30, 40 or 50 more years of assassination and mayhem."

Mr O Bradaigh said RSF had an alternative "three-strand approach" for the island. A 32county election would be followed by an "all-Ireland constituent assembly" which would draft a new constitution. To this assembly, RSF would also bring proposals for a federation of the four provinces, with maximum devolution of power.

The east-west relationship would be replaced by a federal Ireland's membership of a league of Celtic nations, excluding England, he said.

Other speakers compared the Belfast Agreement to the 1921 Treaty. The party's vice-president, Mr Des Long, said Ireland was being put in the same position now as it had then, by being threatened with the prospect of renewed and increased violence if the agreement was rejected.

"Lloyd George said we would have terrible war if we didn't sign, but we've had terrible war in the past 75 years."

Cllr Joe O'Neill said that in negotiating the Belfast Agreement, the Taoiseach had left Ireland in an even worse situation than 1921, "because we're going back into the British Empire through the Council of the Isles". He said the media had not "picked up" on this part of the agreement.

Mr O Bradaigh criticised the decision to hold the referendums on the same day, saying the Amsterdam Treaty was being "completely eclipsed" by the debate on the North.

However, his son, Mr Ruairi Og O Bradaigh, said as a young person, he was calling on other young people to vote against the treaty and a future which would include "conscription in a European army".