The SDLP leader, Mr John Hume, said in Cork last night that it was the duty of all the people of this island to accept the democratic will of the electorate on both sides of the Border in relation to the peace agreement.
Mr Hume, who was delivering a lecture at University College, Cork, said people on both sides of the Border had given a strong voice to the opinion that "sharing this piece of earth" was something that should be achieved.
Asked about decommissioning, Mr Hume said that issue was an important part of the agreement which had been signed on Good Friday in Belfast, and which had been recognised by all the people of the island. Therefore there was no doubt that if the principles of the agreement were to be adhered to, decommissioning was also a vital component. But decommissioning, he said, should not be seen as a precondition to the implementation of the agreement but parallel to it and to its other aspects.
He said that he believed, as did others who sat around the table prior to the signing of the Belfast Agreement, that by appointing an outstanding international body on decommissioning a useful step had been made. "Therefore, we should abide by it and agree to its findings. It should not become a stumbling block," he said.
He added that in his view, there was immense international goodwill for the peace process, which could be harnessed to give great economic benefit to the people of Northern Ireland. However, he warned, this goodwill would not last forever and, therefore, the culmination of the peace process should be achieved as speedily as possible.
"We must get the agreement going forward as quickly as is possible but if we do it, it will transform the economy of the North and will bring both sectors together, working productively, leaving age-old quarrels behind," he said.
Mr Hume was delivering the Philip Monahan Memorial Lecture at UCC. Mr Monahan was Cork's first city manager and one of the first public servants in the State to introduce new developments on local authority policy, particularly in the housing area, in Ireland. He served between 1924 and 1953.