Northern Ireland 2006?

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Rumour is that Hain will be given powers to call a snap election to the NI Assembly; he apparently wants fresh elections this autumn.

[Јas]

Lead story in today's Irish Times:

Blair plans restored NI Assembly without Executive

British prime minister Tony Blair is considering a plan to restore the Northern Ireland Assembly with initially limited powers and an absolute deadline for the re-establishment of an inclusive power-sharing Executive, writes Frank Millar, London Editor.

This emerged last night amid the confusion and uncertainty generated by Mr Blair's decision to cancel a planned trip to Belfast next week to deliver a major speech intended to force the pace in negotiations with the political parties about the return of devolution.

Sources close to DUP leader the Rev Ian Paisley have suggested Mr Blair "has no plan" and is unlikely to reinstate his proposed visit to the North.

However, as reported in The Irish Times on Thursday, Downing Street maintains Mr Blair's trip has been postponed rather than cancelled, and that the prime minister now has "a clear idea of how to proceed". Usually reliable sources suggest this was likely to be by way of a time-limited initiative allowing the Assembly to get up-and-running "in some sort of shadow form" but with an end-date set for an Assembly vote on the formation of a new power-sharing administration.

While allowing that the emergent plan is nowhere near completion, and that difficult negotiations lie ahead, the sources suggested the timetable for such an initiative could be between six months and a year.

This would seem to offer a variation of proposals put to Mr Blair by the SDLP and Ulster Unionists at their meetings at Westminster on Wednesday. Crucially, however, a fixed one-year time-frame would arguably allow the DUP a credible period in which to assess the continuing state of IRA activity through recurring reports of the Independent Monitoring Commission.

At the same time, assuming an eventual clean bill of health for the republican movement, it could put the onus on the DUP to take responsibility for collapsing the political institutions should Dr Paisley still refuse to enter government with Sinn Féin.

It is also suggested that Northern Ireland Secretary Peter Hain might use new powers to call a snap Assembly election later this year, in order to avoid having any successful moves toward resumed power-sharing derailed by the hardened rhetoric which would inevitably attend the elections scheduled for May 2007.

Recent republican rhetoric has persuaded some Ulster Unionists that Sinn Féin might "pull the plug" on any proposal to restore the Assembly without a functioning Executive as prescribed by the Belfast Agreement.

However the calculation appears to be that neither Sinn Féin president Gerry Adams nor Dr Paisley would want to take the blame for wrecking an initiative offering at least the prospect of breaking the political impasse.

The suggestion of a time-limit would also appear to satisfy SDLP leader Mark Durkan's objection that current DUP proposals for a limited role for the Assembly could be used to "encamp the parties" on such terrain indefinitely.

However, Mr Blair faces major difficulty persuading the SDLP to co-operate with any initiative in the context of London's clear determination to legislate for the alternative "comprehensive agreement" which the British and Irish governments failed to conclude with the DUP and Sinn Féin in December 2004. After his latest meetings with both governments, Mr Durkan insisted "the so-called 'comprehensive agreement' was not a basis for progress".

Following Thursday's publication of a new Northern Ireland Bill designed to quickly enable any new agreement, Mr Durkan warned: "There is real danger of political misadventure if the governments try to implement the failed comprehensive agreement."

[afleitch]

Maybe the DUP should be honest; it not SinnFein they don't want to share power with, but more than likely the SDLP too!

[minionofmidas]

Maybe the DUP should be honest; it not SinnFein they don't want to share power with, but more than likely the SDLP too!

If they were honest they'd just say, we don't want power for Catholics, and we don't want any power ourselves.

[Kevinstat]

Maybe the DUP should be honest; it not SinnFein they don't want to share power with, but more than likely the SDLP too!

If they were honest they'd just say, we don't want power for Catholics, and we don't want any power ourselves.

That would be the UKUP, Bob McCartney's party.  I read that they were opposed to practically any (if not any) form of devolution, even of the sort that Unionists might like like going back to the Stormont days when there was no "White Paper" standard of both Unionists and Nationalists being part of any governing coalition (well, technically not I guess based on the language, but that was the clear intent).  You could read more about what I'm talking about at various pages of the Northern Ireland Social and Political Archive (ARK)'s Elections section ( http://www.ark.ac.uk/elections/ ), such as http://www.ark.ac.uk/elections/gparties.htm (the author must have deleted the part about the UKUP being anti-devolutionist, or maybe I read that somewhere else) and http://www.ark.ac.uk/elections/fa73.htm (where the "White Paper" and it's implications on the 1973 Assembly Elections (that assembly was not the same assembly as existed from 1998 until... I've heard it's been suspended, but I'm not sure when that happened and how total the suspension is - like would the next assembly should it be elected soon be considered separate from the 1998-200? Assembly?) is discussed).

[minionofmidas]

Nah, I didn't say "no power for Protestants"... I said "no power for the DUP leaders". Big difference.

[Јas]

From The Irish Times website (www.ireland.com), Breaking news section:

March 8th deadline set for devolution agreement
Last updated: 20-02-06, 14:16 

Northern Ireland's politicians were today set a March 8th deadline for progress on some of the issues covered in talks to revive devolution.


As a second round of negotiations took place at Stormont, Northern Ireland Secretary Peter Hain said parties had to reach agreement by that date if there were to be legislative changes to the way Northern Ireland is governed.

"I want to see agreement reached on March 8," said Mr Hain, who was co-hosting the talks with the Minister for Foreign Affairs, Dermot Ahern.

Mr Hain introduced legislation in the House of Commons last Thursday that the Irish and British governments believe could be used as a vehicle for any legislative changes required to the plans for devolved government.

The Rev Ian Paisley's Democratic Unionists and the Ulster Unionists have proposed the resumption of the Northern Ireland Assembly, without immediately forming a full-blown devolved government.

The DUP has argued the political climate is not right for power-sharing with Sinn Féin but that there could be a role for the 108 Assembly members.

They have outlined a number of models including Assembly committees scrutinising the work of British direct rule ministers. Nationalist parties have rejected the idea.

At his party's annual conference at the weekend, Sinn Féin chief negotiator Martin McGuinness opposed any proposals that fell short of power sharing as envisaged by the 1998 Belfast Agreement.

Although the DUP had talks with Mr Hain, it did not meet Mr Ahern.

"I think a source of disappointment because we are at a stage where we need all the parties to engage if we want to get to the end game of the restoration of devolution here in Northern Ireland," Mr Ahern said.

As he arrived for talks, SDLP leader Mark Durkan said the only baseline for progress was the Belfast Agreement, and he accused Sinn Féin of agreeing to a shadow Assembly in the comprehensive agreement it almost struck with the DUP in December 2004.

"The comprehensive agreement departs in major ways from the Good Friday Agreement," the Foyle MP insisted.