This Week They Said

Sinn Fein is deeply disappointed at the turn of events... We have been told that the Ulster Unionist Party have said "No"

Sinn Fein is deeply disappointed at the turn of events . . . We have been told that the Ulster Unionist Party have said "No". I am asking everyone to reflect on this and on the seriousness of it.

- Sinn Fein president Mr Gerry Adams, after the UUP appeared to reject the package for peace

Put these people to the test. Call their bluff a bit, that's my view. They say they are going to deliver. Let's see if they are going to deliver.

- The Northern Secretary, Mr Peter Mandelson, to UUP Assembly member Sir John Gorman, in an apparent reference to decommissioning by the IRA

READ MORE

She [Dr Mowlam] cut a unique and irreplaceable figure. But I did sense a certain relief when people realised I wasn't going to try to hug them.

- Mr Mandelson

All people are the same, under and over the turf. All rogues go racing, but not necessarily all people who go racing are rogues.

- Terry Rogers, bookmaker, who has died

I wish to make it clear that I have done nothing wrong.

- Fianna Fail TD Mr John Ellis, after he resigned as chairman of the Oireachtas committee on agriculture

He pursued me for his full costs of £2,701 and refused to take anything less. He wouldn't settle for £2,500 or £2,000, so I don't think he should be allowed to make any kind of part-payment now.

- Farmer Joe Walsh, owed £6,748 by Mr Ellis, of a legal bill he incurred for £2,701 after a case he took against the TD failed

You can't have tax reductions for everybody . . . All our good friends with the Ansbacher accounts could benefit.

- Peter Cassells, general secretary of the Irish Congress of Trade Unions

I feel as if a dream has been squandered. I understand why it has happened but I don't like the fact that Australians have unwittingly betrayed themselves into this fate.

- The founding father of the Australian Republican Movement, author Thomas Keneally

Without Gorbachev and his singular courage, the stream of events across Europe during the autumn of 1989 never would have been possible.

- Helmut Kohl, former German chancellor, on the fall of the Berlin Wall

A bare-faced and monumental betrayal of promises made to the public.

- John Gormley, Green Party, to the Taoiseach during the Dail debate on PfP, membership of which has been approved

I made a personal mistake and they spent $50 million trying to ferret it out because they had nothing else to do.

- President Clinton, of the Lewinsky affair and the Whitewater inquiry

The President uses the Oval Office mostly for business, but also for private matters.

- A White House intern to visitors awaiting Mr Clinton's arrival

It would be good if we could all wake up before an asylum-seeker with nowhere else to sleep for the night is kicked to death in a doorway in our can-do, well-off, aren't-we-wonderful little European country.

- Padraig O'Morain, Social Affairs Correspondent of The Irish Times, of the muted reaction to the temporary closure of the Refugee Application Centre in Dublin