Sir, One sentence in the 20 page report by Senator Mitchell that the unionists and the British government were alone in insisting they be included so that they could then seize on it hardly constitutes Senator Mitchell and his colleagues floating the possibility of an election to precede talks. Instead it shows John Major clutching at straws.
In refusing even to begin to discuss the acceptance by Sinn Fein of the Mitchell report and its six principles and instead opting to replace "Washington 3" with "Trimble 1", John Major performs the extraordinary feat of beginning to make John Hume look more like a John Redmond to even moderate young nationalists who fear that British government will always subordinate the lives of Irish people to its determination to hang on to power and, whether by design or default, by its stalling and prevarication allow the creeping return of Stormont days.
It is not just the fear that any elected body before talks, whatever its stated duration or mandate, would inevitably be turned by the unionists into a "mini Stormont", but that the delay introduced by a replay of the Prior Assembly and "rolling devolution" of 1982 will inevitably unwind the cessations. John Major may have hoped to buy time and to expose Sinn Fein with his Commons statement. Ironically, he may merely have exposed once again to a generation of young Irish nationalists the limitations of "constitutional" nationalism when faced with a minority government in Britain and started the timer ticking. Yours, etc., Formerly Secretary of the Campaign for the Birmingham Six (England), Montague Road, Handsworth, Birmingham.