Trimble Seeks Surrender 

By NiallO’Dowd

THE outrageous behavior of David Trimble in turning down the carefully choreographed deal put together by the parties in the North and the British and Irish governments is an utter disgrace.

Trimble had signed on to the deal put together so painstakingly over a period of months since the breakdown of negotiations last April, just when a deal seemed in sight.

Since then the two governments and all the parties involved, including the U.S., have worked night and day to make the restoration of the Stormont power sharing government a reality. Trimble has now severely damaged their efforts with his latest stunt.

The destruction of a huge cache of IRA weapons on Tuesday should have officially ended Europe’s longest running conflict, yet it was not good enough for Trimble. 

What he is clearly seeking is surrender from the IRA, not an agreed sequence of placing arms beyond use. He apparently wants to humiliate and grind down the Republican movement to the point where he can reassure his own backwoodsmen that he will never compromise with the other side.

Instead of blaming the IRA this time, he absurdly blamed General John de Chastelain, head of the international decommissioning body, for not being specific enough in his comments about what exactly the IRA had put beyond use.

Let’s get one thing straight. De Chastelain received a mandate from the two governments and all the parties in Northern Ireland, including Trimble’s, to oversee, under very specific conditions, the decommissioning of weapons.

One of those conditions, agreed to by all the parties, was confidentiality in the process of destroying the weapons. It was quite obviously a very necessary provision given the highly secret nature of the arms disposal process.

Let us also remember who de Chastelain is, a highly decorated general in the Canadian Army who has been in Northern Ireland for several years and has won widespread respect for his probity and integrity.

If de Chastelain says large qualities of arms have been destroyed then he must be taken at his word. There is simply no other way that the process can work.

Trimble, however, seems intent on being the bull in the china shop every time there is a prospect of a lasting peace being negotiated.

Once again he has pulled back at the last second and left a devastated peace process in his wake. It now appears he intended to pull this stunt all along, sucking in the Irish and British governments and the Nationalist parties into his plan.

All is not lost, we hope, and already there is a major effort to receive some clarification on the IRA arms issue between now and next Wednesday, when Trimble will hold a special meeting of his party to discuss.

How could Republicans trust Trimble ever again, however, given this escapade? Having pushed the IRA to the very limit, the Sinn Fein leadership is left with major questions about their strategy and whether it is even worthwhile to engage Unionism at all.

But they should not mistake Trimble’s intransigence with the end of the deal. For too long Unionism has held its veto over every development in Northern Ireland. 

It is time the two governments made it clear that if they have to go without them and institute a form of joint sovereignty they will do so. They must realize there has now been more than enough game playing by Trimble.

Tuesday, October 21, 2003 may go down in history with other red letter dates in this most extraordinary of peace processes, or it may be remembered as the final blow to a process that has been reeling for some time. The next week will tell much.