Martin Mansergh looks at the painstaking work that went into Hillsborough's struggle for a deal
To borrow a phrase from the deliberations of the EU Convention, the Belfast Agreement is a constitutional treaty. It was ratified in an act of self-determination by the people of Ireland, North and South, voting concurrently, consistent with the principle of consent. It has been fleshed out and supplemented by other more detailed working agreements, designed to achieve its better and uninterrupted implementation.
The session at Hillsborough this week, like earlier ones, and others in Stormont (Castle Buildings) or Downing Street or Weston Park, must be very familiar at this stage to veterans of the process in the parties, and in particular to the Taoiseach, Bertie Ahern, and the Prime Minister, Tony Blair, not to mention journalists waiting and watching on the outside.
The first morning the government delegations, led by their principals, sit down for breakfast to discuss objectives, tactics and time scale. Then the bilaterals begin between Prime Minister and Taoiseach, often, but not always, with Foreign Minister and Secretary of State, and/or with Jonathan Powell and Michael Collins (or his predecessors Dermot Gallagher and Paddy Teahon) present, and the political parties in turn, especially the ones involved in the Executive, the UUP, Sinn Féin and the SDLP.
Officials and other delegation members wait in their rooms to be consulted, to draft or discuss and advise on drafts, to conduct discussions or negotiations in the corridor, and to mull over the state of play and possible ways forward. Occasionally, there is a serious problem back home, needing direction and guidance by phone. Tony Blair at the moment is very obviously preoccupied with Iraq. At Hillsborough, there are also fine gardens for open-air walks and discussion.
Usually, in the weeks preceding intensive multi-party negotiations, documents, based on Brian Cowen's and Paul Murphy's discussions with the parties and the two governments' best assessment of what will produce all-round movement, will have been drawn up by officials. Discussion will focus on the neuralgic points, and the places where the proposed formula, in the view of one or more parties, falls short of promises, expectations or bottom lines. Words are bridges to connect one side with the other.
There are always parties, large and small, who at different times feel that they are out of the loop, who have to be brought up to speed at least in broad terms with latest thinking or developments, or difficulties, so that they have the incentive to stay on board. In the end of the day, the outcome may be much closer to what they are comfortable with than to the position of those who find it hard to grapple with compromise.
The negotiations invariably prove difficult, and drag on into the night and very often another day. Whatever progress is made may eventually have to be parked, pending further consultation with outside bodies, even though the governments and the parties would much prefer to be able to wrap the discussions up and launch with some fanfare a document agreed by all, as happened on Good Friday.
It is not always easy, even for those most closely involved, to assess the extent of the breakthrough or to assess with certainty in the immediate aftermath of negotiations that have been completed as far as the governments are concerned, whether the parties will on further reflection endorse what has been negotiated, or whether the stand-off will continue. I have always regretted the absence of the more fluid negotiating style that one finds in social partnership talks, or EU negotiations, where people, after defending their positions, generally want to make agreements and move on. The higher the price sought for movement, the slower it becomes, and much of the benefit of momentum can be lost.
The pro-agreement parties are all clear that there is no satisfactory alternative to working the agreement. Obviously, as at present, direct rule, with the type of consultative arrangements with the Irish Government that have been adapted with some modifications from the Anglo-Irish Agreement and reincorporated in the Belfast Agreement; continued operation of the North-South institutions on a care and maintenance basis; and reconvening the Forum for Peace and Reconciliation, temporarily fill the gap caused by suspension, but are not satisfactory on any long-term basis.
One of the main objectives of the current discussions must be to find a means of bringing to an end the stop-go existence to date of the institutions that are at the core of the agreement. Political and economic confidence requires stability. The Belfast Agreement has the potential to demonstrate that Northern Ireland can be a viable and legitimate political entity within a wider framework.
The lesson of history is that the price of blocking change is having to accept much bigger changes in the end. How many unionists today are grateful to the Jim Molyneaux leadership for blocking over a 20-year period an agreement with the SDLP, until that finally became impossible without involving Sinn Féin? The politics of David Burnside and his allies, if they were to be fully adopted by the UUP, which so far they have not been, would probably do as much to hasten a united Ireland as any efforts on the part of nationalism. I do not see the Protestant and unionist population of Northern Ireland supporting indefinitely policies that condemn Northern Ireland to be a less competitive British-Irish backwater.
Suspension is a crude form of existing sanction that affects all parties. It has been applied on a number of occasions by Secretaries of State using a contested power in order to pre-empt a breakdown that can be precipitated by any party walking away, on whom the functioning of the institutions on a cross-community basis depends. Whatever the initial cause of the suspension, the way out has always been found in a collective solution to a whole series of outstanding problems.
The most important of these problems, in my view, in real terms is policing. Without full cross-community participation in and support for the new Police Service of Northern Ireland, there remains a vacuum filled very unsatisfactorily by paramilitaries, who use crude forms of justice totally incompatible with the respect for human rights that their political wings demand from the state.
Participation in policing on the basis of the Patten Report will ensure that the equality agenda can be properly applied in this critical area of policing. While there are many reproaches that can be made, republicans, of all people, can hardly argue that those who belonged to an organisation in the past should be disqualified in the future, because of the character and odium attached to actions of that organisation.
All-round demilitarisation was and is a prime objective of the peace process, with reduction of the British military presence to peacetime levels, and the disposal or inactivation of arsenals of war by paramilitary organisations. Everyone knows that the IRA's war is over, and it is time to do away with the pretence amongst hardliners, of whatever hue, that the return to a partial, let alone a full-scale, paramilitary campaign is a real or plausible option in any foreseeable circumstances.
Long-held views on the IRA campaign that has ceased are unlikely to change either. Is there anyone out there to argue that the republican movement is a defeated organisation? But, equally only the most jaundiced could seriously maintain the opposite, that the IRA won the war over 30 years.
The unionist community, despite the substantial numbers that became targets and victims, refused to be coerced, and there has to be respect for that.
It is a legitimate demand that there at least be a level playing-field for the future. That is not just a unionist demand. It is a democratic demand with support fromnearly all parties North and South.
If the chapter is not closed on the past 30 years, the danger is the recurring embarrassment that dogged and finally split apart the much smaller Workers' Party.
The new demilitarised situation will require a lot of self-discipline, beyond what has already been achieved and sustained. The monitoring mechanism involving the US government should lead to a more independent and objective assessment of complaints against any party, rather than giving credence immediately to every plausible allegation that may or may not have solid evidence to back it up at the end of the day.
It is very hard to envisage a situation, bar the now exceptionally unlikely circumstances provided for in the Belfast Agreement, where a major party could be sanctioned in such a way as to exclude it from an Executive that would be able to carry on as before without it. Partial self-exclusion, as in the case of the DUP, is of course a wholly different matter.
I hope that a sense of perspective is maintained, before any party decides to place the potentially huge gains on offer at risk. Great commitment has been shown by the Taoiseach and Prime Minister in a difficult international climate, both politically and economically. Both will be inured to the habit of the Ulster Unionist leader of leaving them unexpectedly for some unspecified more pressing engagement, and to morning-after comments by Sinn Féin, that rarely betrays much satisfaction with huge progress painstakingly achieved, that not enough is on offer. Elections, that should give voters a chance to register their verdict, have been postponed, but only by a little.