hSir, - Almost four years ago and two months prior to the signing of the much-heralded Downing Street Declaration, I questioned the sanity of the Ulster Unionist health spokesman, Martin Smyth, after Mr Smyth indicated his willingness to parley with Sinn Fein if the IRA renounced violence.
Martin Smyth's comments - which were furiously rejected at the time from within and outside the Ulster Unionist Party - were later underwritten by the then Ulster Unionist leader, Jim Molyneaux, but with the precondition that, in the event of the IRA renouncing violence, a quarantine period of no less than five years would be needed to allow the IRA to demonstrate its commitment to peace and democracy before Ulster Unionists could talk to Sinn Fein. Four years later, and after one IRA ceasefire and the recent calling of another (which one suspects will be equally as bogus as the first), one finds that David Trimble is prepared to parley with Sinn Fein within just six weeks of the IRA renouncing violence, but with little evidence to suggest that Sinn Fein/IRA have committed themselves to non-violence and democracy.
While one welcomes the withdrawal of the DUP and UKUP from the talks, they, like the Ulster Unionists, should never have entered into the current round under the present ground rules. The raison d'etre of the talks (which began in 1987 and have been interrupted several times since, and extended to include anyone and everyone), was, let it not be forgotten, "to find an alternative to, and replacement of, the Anglo-Irish Agreement, backed up by a reasonable workable administration acceptable to the four main parties in Northern Ireland, in line with the 1979 Conservative Manifesto commitment to a regional administrative council."
Ten years later, one suspects that even if multi-party talks get underway in September (with, or hopefully without, the Ulster Unionists), the chances of realising that objective are all the more remote now given that all talks participants have long abandoned any insistence that the Anglo-Irish Agreement, Conference and Secretariat should be suspended for the duration of the talks, and that an ever-increasing number of participants are unlikely to reach agreement on the basis to succeed, particularly when issues such as the decommissioning of terrorist weapons (important as they are), are allowed to distract participants in the talks from realising the objective they were entrusted to secure.
I did not support David Trimble's candidacy for the Ulster Unionist Party Leadership in September 1995, preferring instead Willie Ross MP (the only leadership candidate to share my view that there is more to be gained away from the talks table). Trimble's latest ditherings and gaffes have more than vindicated my position and Trimble should now either quit the talks or the leadership of the UUP. - Yours, etc., From Christopher Luke,
Royal Tunbridge Wells, Kent, England.