President says healing process needed in North

RECENT events in Northern Ireland had shown that "maybe we have under estimated the problems and the importance of the healing process and the need to build up trust and understand other people's point of view", the President, Mrs Robinson, has said. She was speaking yesterday at the third annual Glencree Summer School in Co Wicklow on Healing the Wounds of Political Conflict.

Mrs Robinson departed from a prepared speech to stress the need to listen to civil and voluntary groups. While stating that "politicians are crucial" to the situation, to applause from the audience she added that "the issue is too important to be left to them".

Mrs Robinson said, based on international experience, it was worth looking at how healing and building trust must be addressed. "There may be need for some form of public expression of pain and hurt and it may be necessary to tell the full story," she said.

Saying she was aware of the need for balance, the President said it was "necessary to reflect on how much worse it is when the aggressive and sectarian manifestation is by someone in uniform". This was a situation which South Africa was addressing, adding that in Ireland, "there will have to be dialogue".

Describing the experience of the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission, Dr Alexander Boraine, vice chairman of the commission, agreed with the President that "an enabling process" was necessary for reconciliation.

Dr Boraine said South Africa had looked at the experience of countries where human rights abuses had occurred, and he had concluded there was a need for a victim's hurt to be recognised.

The South African experience had raised interesting questions, he said. How did emerging democracies deal with past victims of human rights abuses, how did new regimes deal with past leaders who were responsible and how did the new democracy deal with those people who were still part of the apparatus of State?

The Rev Canon Nicholas Frayling, Anglican rector of Liverpool and author of Pardon and Peace: A Reflection on the Making of Peace in Ireland, said it was important in the healing and reconciliation process to forgive but not to forget. "The key is not in forgetting, but in repenting, in acknowledging the pain of history."

He said an apology was not a sign of weakness but often restored moral credibility to the perpetrator. It was a process to help the perpetrator as well as the victim, as to have reconciliation there must be sorrow and repentance.

The story of the relationship between Ireland and Britain was often the story of wrongdoing, much of it on the part of Britain, for which he felt an apology would be beneficial to the healing process.