Madam, - The responses (September 11th) to my analysis (Opinion, September 9th) of the definition of the Belfast Agreement quoted by Paul Gillespie are depressing confirmation of the near impossibility of having any intelligent debate on the Agreement, or indeed on the whole Northern problem.
Niall Meehan begins by wrongly attributing to me the view that "the Agreement is an instrument to resolve the problem within the bounds of British sovereignty". That is not my assertion, but part of the quotation I was analysing.
He then gets the wrong end of another stick by jumping to the odd conclusion that I think the IRA's failure to disarm has nothing to do with unionist loss of confidence in the Agreement. Of course it has; it is central to it.
Colin Cooper tends to support the view in the quotation that the Agreement is indeed a transitional mechanism leading to some form of Irish unity outside the United Kingdom. Is he really surprised, then, that some unionists, hearing this, do not support the Agreement?
It is fine to say the Agreement presents both traditions with a political avenue to express their national aspirations, but the reality of the Agreement is that they continue to do so within the United Kingdom by virtue of the majority will of the people of Northern Ireland.
To pretend that such an arrangement is therefore transitional to leaving the United Kingdom hardly suggests that those who believe it have put "their overwhelming trust in a reformatted Stormont".
Nationalists do not have to abandon their desire for an independent, united Irish state, but they have to review how they can retain that as the prime goal of their political activity under an Agreement that confirms the democratic legitimacy of Northern Ireland as part of the United Kingdom. - Yours etc.,
DENNIS KENNEDY,
Belfast 7.