Controversial remarks about decommissioning by Mr Albert Reynolds , were "misrepresented", the former Taoiseach said last night. "I fully subscribe to the Mitchell Principles as the way forward for settling decommissioning." Unionists reacted angrily this week to comments attributed to Mr Reynolds suggesting that it would be impossible for Fianna Fail to ask the IRA to hand over weapons because of the party's history.
Decommissioning, he said yesterday, "has been the bugbear of the peace process for the last couple of years, but I'm glad that there is less emphasis on it now and that the talks can go ahead in parallel".
Mr Reynolds added that for peace to endure, "all guns will have to be destroyed or dumped".
He was speaking before the start of the Humbert Summer School in Ballina, Co Mayo. The week-long school will discuss "post-Robinson Ireland" and other themes.
Asked if he was discouraged by Mr David Andrews's endorsement of Mr John Hume for President, Mr Reynolds said: "David Andrews or anybody else in the party can have their own views. It is a decision that the parliamentary party has to take and not any single individual."
During an upbeat speech about the peace process to the summer school, Mr Reynolds described the Newsnight debate between Mr Martin McGuinness and Mr Ken Maginnis as "a victory for common sense".
He attacked suggestions by unionists that the previous IRA ceasefire was a "phoney ceasefire", and said that hundreds of lives had been saved while it lasted.
He praised the "courageous" decision by Orangemen to reroute some controversial parades in recent weeks, and what he described as the "reciprocal" restitution of the IRA ceasefire by the republican leadership.
Mr Reynolds suggested that confidence-building measures to reinforce the new ceasefire should start with moves to bring forward a Bill of Rights on both sides of the Border.
The Sinn Fein MP, Mr Martin McGuinness, who said republicans acknowledged the hurt for which they had been responsible, said Wolfe Tone's republicanism was as "pertinent" today as in 1798.
The Society of the United Irishmen was founded on three resolutions, he said. They were that a "cordial union" was required among Irish people to resist the weight of English influence, preserve liberty and extend commerce; that the "sole constitutional mode by which the influence can be opposed is by a complete and radical reform of the representation of the people in parliament; and that "no reform is practicable, efficacious or just, which shall not include Irishmen of every religious persuasion".
Mr McGuinness said these basic principles were as important to modern-day republicans as to the men of 1798.
"We republicans acknowledge the hurt for which we have been responsible. It is noteworthy that while the loyalists similarly have acknowledged the hurt that they have caused in this conflict, the leaderships of the main unionist parties have yet to acknowledge the injustices."