Madam, - Mark Durkan is right to remind Sinn Féin that the vast majority of the people who in recent years voted for that party did so to support it out of violence and criminality, not to endorse their continuance.
The republican movement is damaging the nationalist community in Northern Ireland. It is giving the DUP and other bigots the excuse to attack everyone of an Irish identity - and all because it seems unable to leave behind a past of criminality and violence.
I want to congratulate Mr Durkan for his honesty and his courage. He is saying what very many people are thinking. Constitutional Ireland must now stand behind him. Sinn Féin says it speaks for over 300,000 voters; but these are votes it has on loan from many decent people across Ireland.
It is now time for all the leaders of constitutional Ireland to lend Mark Durkan and the SDLP their votes and their voice. Then he will speak for over 2 million.
How do they do this? By agreeing to an urgent meeting of the Forum for Peace and Reconciliation to agree on Ireland's response to recent events. And may I suggest this meeting take place north of the Border? It could also usefully, as Mark Durkan has suggested, seek final agreement on the principal of consent - something Sinn Féin was unwilling to support when the Forum last discussed the issue some years ago.
Decent nationalists deserve support and encouragement. They are part of the majority on this island for peace and against criminality and violence. Constitutional Ireland must now stand shoulder to shoulder with them. - Yours, etc.,
CONALL McDEVITT, Marlborough Park, Belfast 9.
Madam, - We seem to have very strange priorities in this country. Kevin Myers uses a hurtful and offensive word in an intemperate column, and your readers go into spasms of outrage.
For 30 years the IRA waged a vicious murder campaign and now its is cynically manipulating the "peace process" to gain electoral advantage, poisoning democratic politics in the process.
Where is the moral outrage over this? - Yours, etc.,
AODHAN MADDEN, Portersgate, Dublin 15.