Early parallel decommissioning need no longer be insisted on, says Ahern

IT was no longer realistic to insist upon early parallel decommissioning as an absolute precondition to the progress of meaningful negotiations, the Fianna Fail leader, Mr Ahern, said yesterday.

In a statement, he suggested that, in present circumstances, it was clear that mass, and in part violent, street protest was just as capable of overturning the rule of law and decisions arrived at the negotiating table as renewed paramilitary violence. "To that extent, there is a level playing field," he said.

Mr Ahern continued that the British government and the Ulster Unionist Party should be called upon to accept and subscribe to the principle of consent, so that they did not witness again the shameful and illegal coercion of the nationalist community that took place in the Garvaghy and Ormeau Roads by the Orange Order with the assistance of the RUC.

Referring to the Panorama revelation that Mr David Trimble had more than an hour long dialogue with the former UVF prisoner in Portadown, Mr Billy Wright, Mr Ahern said that even if only in the interests of averting a dangerous situation, there should be nothing in principle now preventing the Ulster Unionist Party sitting down in meaningful all party talks including Sinn Fein, once a new and lasting ceasefire was in place.

He continued that it was now obvious from last week's events that only an overall settlement that brought confidence stability and reconciliation would provide the context for a demilitarisation of Northern society and a decommissioning of weapons.

There was no evidence that the problem was seen very differently by the loyalist organisations.

"However desirable early parallel decommissioning might be in building confidence and advancing a settlement, and Fianna Fail supports the idea, it is no longer realistic, if it ever was, to insist upon it as an absolute precondition to the progress of meaningful negotiations," Mr Ahern said.

The two governments should recognise that the best they might be able to achieve was decommissioning as an essential part of an overall settlement, he concluded.