Sir, - In Section 5 of the Declaration of Support in the Agreement, it states: "It is accepted that all of the institutional and constitutional arrangements - an Assembly in Northern Ireland, a North/South Ministerial Council, implementation bodies, a British-Irish Council and a British-Irish Intergovernmental Conference and any amendments to British Acts of Parliament and the Constitution of Ireland - are interlocking and interdependent."
Given that Sinn Fein has not only read the agreement, but signed it, talk of it "cherry-picking" by calling for a Yes vote in the North and a No vote in the South is, to put it mildly, disingenuous. If Articles 2 and 3 are not amended, then, on the basis that "nothing is agreed until everything is agreed", the agreement is a dead letter.
There may be a simpler explanation for talk of a Yes vote in the North and a No vote in the South: Southern Provisionals appear to be far more "hawkish" than those in the North. In a similar fashion, unionists from the loyalist heartlands are far more anti-agreement than those from Belfast. In the front line of West Belfast, as we have recently seen on TV, republicans and loyalists seen not only to be wholeheartedly pro-agreement, but capable on working together on issues such as the proposed new university for the area. It is easier to play the hard man from the safety of Donegal or Ballymena. As the Ulster saying has it, "It's easy to lie on another man's wounds."
The agreement is a compromise, there is no victory in it; but neither is there any defeat - nor is there any sane alternative to a Yes vote North and South. - Yours, etc.,
Sean Swan,
Walnut Grove, Wexford.