Sir, - As Suzanne Breen reported (The Irish Times, September 3rd), a spokesman for the Continuity IRA said of the all-party talks: "Their logical outcome is a new Stormont and the copperfastening of partition."
I suggest that such an outcome is not axiomatic.
The British Prime Minister, Mr Blair, has made it clear that he is fully committed to the Joint Declaration. In paragraph 4 of that document, Britain guarantees the unionist position, while stating that its aim is "to encourage, facilitate and enable" the achievement of agreement between the Irish people alone and the Irish people as a whole without "external impediment". It accepts that such agreement may, as of right, take the form of agreed structures for the island as a whole, including a united Ireland.
The guarantee to unionism and the Irish dimension enunciated by Britain in the same paragraph are mutually exclusive.
To resolve this dilemma, unless it wants unionism to stand firm with its back against the prop of the British guarantee of majority rule ad infinitum, Britain must indicate that encouraging, facilitating and enabling an all-Ireland solution means that it is not going to stay in Ireland forever and that, in the meantime, it will use its best endeavours to establish the political structures that will permit all sections of the Irish people to live in peace and harmony.
It is worthy of note that the core principle of consent was spelled out by the British Government in the context of the Irish dimension. Surely this has constitutional connotations as regards Northern Ireland. Among others, Senator George Mitchell, chairman of the Peace Process, has indicated that this is the case.
I submit that if the constitutionally bound Irish Government, backed by Sinn Fein and the SDLP, pressed the Irish dimension, inclusive of consent, with energy and resolve, they could succeed in having Britain acknowledged that it is not going to stay in Ireland forever. The logic of the Irish dimension in paragraph 4 of the Joint Declaration points in that direction. - Yours, etc.,
Lombard Court, Dublin 8.