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The Ulster Unionist
Party hold their annual conference this week even as Senator George Mitchell
struggles to find a way forward in the Northern Ireland peace process.
The Ulster Unionist leader David Trimble met Sinn Finn leaders on Friday
and the two parties are due to meet again tomorrow. But what can they
hope to achieve. Mr Trimble is in our Belfast studio. Good afternoon
Mr Trimble.
DAVID TRIMBLE: Good afternoon.
HUMPHRYS: You said yesterday that
you've been going around in circles in your meetings with Sinn Fein. You
have to reach agreement though don't you?
TRIMBLE: Yes, but we have to have
some sensible responses from them, which unfortunately we haven't had.
Now, I welcomed the review and I'm very glad that George Mitchell is there
to help, but so far the meetings that we've had with Sinn Fein have been
extremely disappointing. There hasn't been any substance coming from them
at all, and there doesn't even seem to be a willingness from them to grasp
that they do have to do something. They don't seem to realise the extent
to which conference as a process has diminished because of the continuing
violence and because of their unwillingness to show that they're going
to leave terrorism behind and commit themselves fully and irrevocably to
peace and democracy.
HUMPHRYS: You have acknowledged
though that the destruction of the Good Friday agreement to use your own
words, would undermine the union, so ultimately you have no choice but
to make it work?
TRIMBLE: Well . we will do all
what we can. We have been doing all that we can, but what remains to be
done is something that only the paramilitaries can do, because the whole
concept of a peace process is one that delivers peace, not an armed truce,
not a temporary pause between one onslaught of violence and another, so
that there has to be a movement towards peace by the paramilitaries. They
haven't done it yet. All we've got are temporary cessations of violence.
We need to see a permanent end and people committing themselves truly
and irrevocably to the democratic process, and .I can't do this for them.
And we've shown that we're willing to help them, but I can't do it for
them, they have to do it themselves, and they have to realise that they
too have to change. Now, maybe we can't get it work, and if we can't get
it to work then that's a different situation, that's not a matter that
we have undermined the good Friday agreement, but that that have failed
to deliver.
HUMPHRYS: You say you can't do
it for them, but if they don't disarm yet, what you can do is you can tinker
about with the timing can't you? You could for instance say: Look let's
find a way whereby we can set up an executive in Northern Ireland before
the IRA actually begins the process of physically getting rid of any weapons.
TRIMBLE: Well, what would be the
point of doing that. What would be the point of bringing about a situation
where people are in government by day and involved in terrorism by night.
Wouldn't that be an appalling state of affairs? Isn't that likely to
lead to a complete collapse of confidence in this process if you're going
to undermine and destroy the integrity of it. I can't see the point of
even thinking in those terms.
HUMPHRYS: Well, if the alternative
is the - is undermining the Union through the destruction of the Good Friday
agreement then, you've got to find something as you so frankly acknowledged
at the beginning of this interview. I mean is there not a way in which,
and this is what many people believe you are working towards, you could
accept some sort of commitment from Sinn Fein and then allow the executive
to be set up.
TRIMBLE: I've made it clear all
the way through this that words are not enough, and they are not enough,
they're not going to carry credibility. People bound themselves under
the agreement to do certain things, then there's no escape from that fact,
and let's be clear too John just in case there's any misunderstanding,
I did say to some people yesterday that if Unionists deliberately destroyed
this process that I could see that weakening the Union rather than strengthening
it. But that's a totally different situation to the present situation
where a greater number of Unionists under my leadership are doing their
best to implement the agreement and we're being frustrated by the refusal
of paramilitaries to move. Now, sooner or later other parties to that,
other political parties and governments will have to take cognisance of
the refusal of the paramilitaries to carry out their part of the agreement
and we'll then have to see what is the best thing we can do in that situation.
At the moment we're still trying, we're still hoping that the paramilitaries
will do their part but eventually there'll come a point when the other
parties will have to consider what the implications of the refusal of terrorists
to abandon terrorism is.
HUMPHRYS: So you are saying quite
clearly that there is no way the executive can be set up unless and until
they start handing over weapons. They have physically to hand over weapons
before that executive can be set up?
TRIMBLE: When they adhered to the
agreement they made commitments to establish a commitment to peaceful and
democratic means, to exclusively peaceful means, and that was made an express
prerequisite to the creation of an administration. They also committed
themselves to maintain a complete and unequivocal cease-fire, and they
committed themselves to decommission weapons and to a point where there
is total disarmament of all paramilitary groups. Now, on each and every
one of those commitments Sinn Fein, the IRA, the UDF, the UDA have each
and every one of them defaulted. Now, that's the present state of affairs.
And we look at this situation against a background in the summer where
the IRA committed a murder in Belfast, where's there are constant beatings
and shootings in Northern Ireland, and where they were caught out trying
to import weapons. And we say to them, those three commitments to exclusively
peaceful and democratic means, to a complete and unequivocal cease-fire
as means of proving that, those will have to be delivered on, and while
we'll be patient and have been patient, now really there will eventually
come at time when all the other parties are going to have to say to themselves
where does the refusal of the paramilitaries leave us, what is the best
thing then to do.
HUMPHRYS: So if they were to say
to you: Look, - Sinn Fein that is, if they were to say to you: Look, we
can't deliver on that, we simply can't. The IRA won't let us which is
effectively the message there, but what we can do is we can give you a
commitment that within days of the executive being set up, and this is
maybe no more than a face-saving exercise, but whatever, however you define
it, within days of an executive being set up we will begin the process
of decommissioning, you would not even consider that as an option would
you, is that what you're saying?.
TRIMBLE: Well, that isn't the situation
that we're in at the moment.
HUMPHRYS: No, but if it were?
TRIMBLE: But it's not the situation
we're in at the moment and I'm not going to get into hypotheticals. I
did actually say in the House of Commons in July that if we had clear guarantees
and we knew that something was definitely going to happen then we would
have the difficult decision of having to consider whether a scruple over
a matter of days would be sufficient or ought to be set aside or not.
But we're not in that situation and I can't even contemplate asking people
to think in those terms when there isn't any movement whatsoever and I
think we've got to be careful here not to negotiate ourselves in the absence
of other parties into quite false positions and I think we're in danger
of doing that.
HUMPHRYS: Right, but what you're
not saying this morning in this rather ugly abbreviation that is used occasionally,
you're not saying categorically 'No guns, no government'
TRIMBLE: Oh I am, I am, and I would
regard what you've said as being precisely that. There's no question of
people being involved in the administration without decommissioning, that
has to happen.
HUMPHRYS: Right but there is this
question of sequencing isn't there, that other rather ugly expression that's
used to denote something happening after something else has begun the process?
TRIMBLE: The question of sequencing
as I understand it is really quite simple: There's the question of the
formation of an administration and you can break that up into separate
elements. There's the question of decommissioning, you can break those
up into elements too and then you can interlock the two, so that in effect
it is happening simultaneously. That's what I understand by another phrase
that's used in this that the parties should 'jump together', but there's
still the situation where there is no question of people being in administration
without decommissioning, and without them, and decommissioning is only
a part of the process really, the really important thing is the commitment
to exclusively, exclusively peaceful and democratic means which necessarily
involves the ending of paramilitarism and paramilitary organisations.
HUMPHRYS: Right, but commitments
can be put on paper can't they? People can say, 'I hereby commit myself
to X,Y and Z', what you've always been wanting is a physical demonstration
of that commitment. What I understand you to be saying this morning and
I appreciate that you're not in the business of negotiating a delicate
matter like this on the BBC, but what I understand you to be saying is
that you have not ruled out the possibility, let us put it no stronger
than that, the possibility that if a suitable commitment, an acceptable
commitment is made to the process of decommissioning beginning within days
of the Executive being set up, that remains a possibility, unwelcome but
a possibility?
TRIMBLE: I neither descent nor
ascent to those propositions I am simply not contemplating them. I must
make that clear John, I don't want you to, by chopping these things into
small things to try and suggest that we're moving even yet further in this
matter, I'm not simply looking at that at all. I'm saying to the paramilitaries
- they have commitments that they have to honour and they have to honour
those in practice, put them into practice and to show people that that
is what is happening. There are a variety of ways in which they can do
that: If they want to discuss with us the ways and means and the procedures
we're prepared to do so but we've got to get a commitment first and I'm
not going to enter into any discussion of the procedures and exactly how
and when things start being done within the context of jumping together
until we've got clear commitments from them and we haven't even got that.
HUMPHRYS: David Trimble thank you
very much for joining us this morning.
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