DISSIDENT REPUBLICANS are “betraying the ideal of unity by consent” and will not succeed in their attempts to undermine the new political arrangements in Northern Ireland, Minister for Foreign Affairs Micheál Martin said in Lurgan, Co Armagh, yesterday.
On a visit to the nationalist Kilwilkie estate, where dissident republicans have considerable support, Mr Martin said the Government must confront “head on” those who wanted to wreck the cross-community consensus inherent in the Belfast Agreement.
He said the term “dissident” was inappropriate for the paramilitaries who opposed the agreement. “Dissident relates to people of conscience during the cold war,” he said. The paramilitaries who carried out “indiscriminate bombings” such as in Derry last week and had murdered a police officer and two British soldiers should not be given the term.
“I think they are betraying the republican tradition, they are betraying the ideal of unity by consent and in my view they will not succeed,” said Mr Martin.
“Violence is divisive, violence can never unite Ireland, violence can never unite communities, so I don’t get the rationale behind the actions of a very small minority who have been determined to undermine the agreement that people voted for,” said Mr Martin.
He said part of their strategy was to cynically create a situation where the British army might return to Northern Ireland.
Mr Martin said he would not meet the dissidents. “We do not believe in meeting people who are involved in reckless acts that kill, maim or injure people.”
Asked would he meet the anti-agreement éirígí group – which says it opposes violence – and its spokesman Breandán MacCionnaith, the Minister replied: “I will meet people who are committed to the democratic route.”