Unionists want the peace process in Northern Ireland to work but have genuine concerns about the way it has been handled, a former Ireland rugby international claimed today.
Mr Trevor Ringland, a pro-Belfast Agreement member of the Ulster Unionist Party who will address the Forum for Peace and Reconciliation in Dublin today, said he wanted nationalists to understand his community's position better.
Mr Ringland, who insisted he was making his submission to the forum in a personal capacity and not on behalf of the UUP, said: "I think maybe nationalists do not realise how much unionists want this process to work.
"However they need to also appreciate the concerns unionists have about the process. Those have more to do with democracy than any notion of unionists versus nationalists.
"I will be saying I have no doubt that unionists want to create a Northern Ireland that is peaceful, economically prosperous and peacefully stable for all our people," he said.
"I also have no doubt that unionists are quite prepared to share that responsibility with those nationalists who wish to serve the community and that we have no difficulty creating a proper relationship with those in the rest of this island in the context of the consent principle and the developing relationships between Britain and Ireland and within Europe," Mr Ringland said.
He will join academic Mr Paul Bew, newspaper columnist Mr Roy Garland and several clergymen in putting forward the unionist perspective on the peace process to nationalists and cross-community parties from Northern Ireland and the Republic at the forum.
PA