The British Prime Minister has played down the Orange Order's failure to endorse the agreement and reiterated his confidence in the process. Speaking on BBC radio yesterday, Mr Tony Blair said the Order's stance was "actually not as bad as it could have been".
The Order's members had made it clear they wanted clarification of certain issues in the agreement, "but they did not rule out accepting it," he said in an interview for Woman's Hour.
He said unionists would be "entirely right to accept it in the end because it ensures that the principle of consent, which after all is what unionists have always been struggling for, is now the foundation stone of the agreement".
But he admitted it was going to be "tough all the way through", adding: "What we put together was a design for the architecture of peace. We haven't yet constructed the building. The design I think is a good one but it is based very much on the supposition that if one part of the building collapses then the rest of the building collapses. It's either mutually assured success or mutually assured destruction and that's the choice the people have got to make.
"People do have to accept that there is either a new beginning or there isn't. All these questions, like prisoners and all the rest of it, only get dealt with in the context of a genuine end to violence and people pursuing the democratic path."
Paying tribute to the work of many who put such effort into the process, Mr Blair said he had been "heartened" by the strides taken by the Women's Coalition for their "attitude and the sheer sense of constructive willingness to get things done". He stressed the need for a representative assembly and to look for ways of making it as "broad based as possible" and that "it would be both counterproductive and wrong if we didn't find some way of involving those people."
He said that the fact the Northern Secretary, Dr Mo Mowlam, was a woman may have contributed to the steps made in the difficult search for peace.
"I think it did help in some ways being a woman in that situation. I don't think anyone could have done the job better or done it with more patience, good humour, forbearance and skill."