Irish report coolly received

Press, 4 May 1984, Page 6

Irish report coolly received

NZPA-AP Dublin The Irish Republic’s political leaders have said in a joint statement that Northern Ireland’s sectarian conflict is so critical that only uniting the island will resolve it, and invited Britain to negotiate. The parties said in a report by the New Ireland Forum, set up by the Irish Prime Minister, Dr Garret Fitz Gerald, a year ago, that uniting the Catholic Irish Republic and the Protes-tant-dominated British province was the only real path to peace. The report offered Constitutional guarantees of religious, political, and civil liberties to the one million pro-British Protestants in the north in a bid to woo them into an all-Ireland State. The. Protestants refused to take part in the forum. Dr Fitz Gerald said that he hoped, “the British people and their leaders and those of the (Protestant) unionist tradition will show a similar openness in seir approach to the resolution

of the problems with which history has left us.”

There was no time-scale for a British response to the report, but he hoped action would come in months rather than years.

The British Northern Ireland Secretary, Mr James Prior, said that he held out little hope that anything productive would come out of the report. James Molyneaux, leader of the pro-British Official Unionist Party, called the report “a waste of time.” He said that each part of the United Kingdom was the concern only of Parliament and the people of the United Kingdom.

lan Paisley, leader of the Democratic Unionist Party, said, “The people of Northern Ireland are determined and resolute to remain outside an all-Ireland State and remain part of the United Kingdom.” Hours earlier, he had led a group into Dublin to post a proclamation reading, “Ulster is — no surrender on the city’s General Post Office.” The build-

ing is revered by nationalists as the centre of the illfated Easter rising against British rule in 1916.

The forum’s report said that the battle between the two parts of Ireland had stemmed from the partition imposed by London in 1921. It accused Britain of having pursued a policy of crisis management without political reform that had failed to end the north’s 15 years of bloodshed. The r eport said, “Lon-

don's efforts to contain the violence are driving both sections of the community in Northern Ireland further apart... providing a breeding ground for despair and violence.” It stopped short of demanding Britain’s withdrawal from its troubled province.

But it emphasised that the particular structure of political unity which the forum would wish to see established was a unitary State, “achieved by agreement and consent, embracing the whole island of Ireland.”

“Nationalists are convinced that such unity in agreement would offer the best and most durable basis for peace and stability,” it said.

“Britain is invited to a conference to dicuss the future of Ireland” and a settlement could be one of three options: a united Ireland, a federal arrangement between Dublin and Belfast, or the Irish Republic’s sharing joint authority with London over the north. f ' s

The report is the forum’s first constitutional proposal to end partition and define nationalist aims. It had been scheduled for release in December, but old rivalries between Dr Fitz Gerald’s Fine Gael party and the main opposition Fianna Fail delayed publication for five months.

Despite agreement on the report, those rivalries continued. Fianna Fail’s leader, Mr Charles Haughey, a staunch nationalist, expressed a clear preference for a unitary State governed from Dublin.

Dr Fitz Gerald said that he was prepared to consider the other options cited in the report, but Mr Haughey told a news conference that the other options would not bring peace and stability. Also attending the forum were the Irish Republic’s Labour Party, which is in the coalition Government with Dr Fitz Gerald’s Fine Gael, and the Social Democratic and Labour Party, which is mainly Catholic, from Northern Ireland.