NORTHERN REACTION:UNIONIST LEADERS have criticised revelations made by Tony Blair regarding his negotiations leading to political agreement in Northern Ireland.
Mr Blair admitted that he stretched the truth to breaking point to facilitate agreement and to save the peace process. However, the DUP said it was always cautious of Mr Blair’s verbal promises, while outgoing Ulster Unionist leader Sir Reg Empey claimed the St Andrews Agreement, which led to the restoration of Stormont, was “built on lies”.
East Derry MP Gregory Campbell said his DUP colleagues questioned Mr Blair’s word and always placed proper emphasis “on actions not words”.
“We never accepted words because we knew how easily they had been ditched in the past. Indeed, that is why we ensured upfront delivery by the [British] government and Sinn Féin before we entered government,” Mr Campbell said. “Tony Blair’s handwritten pledges are a textbook example of his approach to the truth as they were put up in lights before the 1998 election and dumped immediately afterwards.”
Sir Reg said his party had not signed up to St Andrews as it was “negotiated behind closed doors between the government, the DUP and Sinn Féin. We now know that the foundation of St Andrews was built on lie after lie. The DUP, sadly, had their eye wiped in part to satisfy Ian Paisley’s vanity.”
Former SDLP leader Mark Durkan said Mr Blair’s memoirs showed that he created difficulties for the Good Friday Agreement which he helped into being.
He said rather than handling the peace process as a multiparty engagement, the memoirs showed he “decided to concentrate on a two-party process involving the parties that were stuck on either side of the decommissioning question – the unionists and Sinn Féin. That’s where he ended up creating difficulties for the [Stormont] institutions and for other parties.”