ANTRIM SHOOTINGS: NORTHERN IRELAND'S political leaders showed a united front at Stormont yesterday in response to Saturday's dissident republican attack in Antrim in which two British soldiers were killed.
Republicans, nationalists and unionists alike condemned the killings “without ambiguity”, and offered their condolences to the families of British soldiers Mark Quinsey and Patrick Azimkar. However, the UUP described Sinn Féin’s initial reaction to the killings as “lacking in clarity”.
First Minister Peter Robinson (DUP) insisted it was “not a time to raise the flag of party politics”. He said the attack was a “glimpse of what we left behind, an act intended to divide us, to raise fear and hatred, and planned to cause us to stumble, designed to force us to turn back”.
He added: “It is a time for every corner of this House and of our community to unite in condemnation and resolve that these people will never win, that we will not be diverted from the course we have set. The continued existence of this institution will be the evidence of the failure of the campaign of murder.”
Sinn Féin president Gerry Adams opened his address by describing himself as “an unrepentant and unapologetic Irish republican”, but stressed the perpetrators of the attack had “no support within broad republicanism or nationalism”. He said the killings were wrong and added: “there can be no ambiguity about that”. He pledged: “Sinn Féin will, not just here, not just in the media, but in the communities we represent, go toe-to-toe with those who would try to drag the people of this island, and especially the North, back into conflict.” Mr Adams said he and his fellow politicians recognised there was “a huge onus on us for action to make politics work”.
He added, however, that there was also an onus on the British government and the PSNI “to resist any temptation for a return to the bad practices of the past”. In reference to last week’s announcement by Chief Constable Sir Hugh Orde that undercover British soldiers were to be deployed in the North,
Mr Adams insisted: “The accountability arrangements around the PSNI must be adhered to and actively promoted.”
The Sinn Féin president was criticised by UUP leader Sir Reg Empey, who claimed Mr Adams’ initial response to the killings was “ambiguous”, and had only “been added to by subsequent statements by others”.
The first Sinn Féin reaction came 12 hours after condemnation from the other Northern parties, and described the attack as “wrong and counter-productive”.
Sir Reg urged those in the republican movement to co-operate fully with the security services. He asked them to “search their memories to see if there are any persons they know who would have knowledge of the type of people capable of carrying out this act”. He implored any loyalists considering retribution for the attack to “desist without delay”.
SDLP leader Mark Durkan said the attack would not succeed in destabilising the peace process.
He added: “The presence of somewhere like Massereene barracks is not an affront to the people of Ireland. It is the attack on Massereene barracks that is an affront to the people of Ireland.”
David Ford, Alliance Party leader and Assembly member for South Antrim, said the Assembly needed to stand together and show that politics could work.
Visibly moved, he added: “Because of the way in this society we often refer to events by place names, when people talk about Antrim in the future they will think of Saturday night. But that wasn’t Antrim. Antrim was Sunday lunchtime, the people standing in simple, quiet dignity as an expression of sympathy to the soldiers who had lost their lives.”