Sir, - The supposed intellectual agonising of Paul Bew and unionism generally ("IRA can afford to play both sides of the alley with impunity", Opinion, September 27th) is painful to watch for several reasons:
1. This agonising has served to prevaricate and cloud what should have been a simple task - the immediate implementation of the Good Friday Agreement and all its structures. Bew's intellectual agonising is just a euphemism for bad faith.
2. It is an astounding ironic conceit that Bew should crown Trimble as the force for stability in the North and Ireland as a whole, when many communities are collapsing from lack of political progress because the Unionist leader is tramping the planks of his agonised mind like some overindulged MacBeth character.
3. The painful sight of Unionist procrastination is accentuated because too many publications like The Irish Times give it an undeserved platform, thereby lending simple bad faith a veneer of intellectual respectability.
4. Lastly, the ceaseless contortions of unionism are exasperating because they could be stopped right now if only we chose to focus on one simple truth: that the so-called dilemma of "democracy versus terrorism" in the North of Ireland is false. Unionism and its British patron, the supposed standard-bearers of democracy, are steeped in violence not only in Ireland but all over the world, from Bloody Sunday to the bombing of Iraq and butchery in East Timor.
The agonising of Bew and unionists is a product of parochialism, patronage, propaganda and a prejudice that they are inherently superior to others. - Yours, etc.,
Finian Cunningham, Rostrevor, Co Down.