950828

Britain could spoil

peace process, warns

former Irish PM

DUBLIN: Former Irish prime minister Albert Reynolds has said Britain could wreck the Northern Ireland peace process by insisting the IRA make what it calls credible progress towards giving up arms.

Reynolds and U.S. President Bill Clinton have been stepping up pressure on Britain to drop its demand that Irish Republican Army guerrillas must start to disarm before it convenes new Northern Ireland peace talks.

Britain's Northern Ireland Office responded on Sunday with a statement making clear its position had not changed.

"Substantive political dialogue cannot take place until there is confidence that those with whom we have been negotiating are committed to exclusively peaceful methods, and have demonstrated their good faith in that regard by the beginning of a credible process of decommissioning of illegally held arms," said the statement.

"To proceed on any other basis would not be sustainable in democratic or constitutional terms," it added.

Reynolds, co-author with British Prime Minister John Major of a 20-month-old peace plan for the province, said Britain was damaging peace prospects.

"It seems to be an extraordinary position that has now been adopted," he told Dublin radio station FM 104 late on Sunday.

"It is a position that, if held on to, will certainly wreck the peace process."

Clinton, who has thrown his weight behind efforts to end one of Europe's longest guerrilla wars, said in a leaked letter that he favoured discussion on the decommissioning of IRA arms at new all-party talks rather than before them.

He told former congressman Bruce Morrison, a key figure in the U.S. Irish lobby, that talks should cover key issues of dispute between Britain, Irish nationalists and pro-British Unionists.

"I would expect all-party talks to address policing, prisoner releases, decommissioning of weapons and other issues," said Clinton, whose letter was leaked to the Dublin Sunday Business Post.

The statements by Reynolds and Clinton showed a gap between Britain and others involved in peace efforts days before the September 1 anniversary of the IRA's truce that halted 25 years of guerrilla war.

Reynolds said British insistence on the decommissioning of IRA arms was never part of the Downing Street Declaration that he co-launched with Major on December 15, 1993.-Reuter