Dublin acted with ‘indecent haste’ seeing Gerry Adams
Events of 1995 as ceasefires bedded in and peace process gained momentum
possibility of the IRA handing over weapons now, or handing them over unilaterally at any stage. He said if it had been clear that this was a pre-condition to progress, there most likely would have been no IRA ceasefire.
It would be “unrealistic” to expect Sinn Fein to bring about the IRA’s surrender. “They simply could not deliver that,” he said.
He now had “serious doubts” about the Government’s resolve to move the process forward. Decommissioning, he added, was being used as a stalling tactic and as an excuse for denying Sinn Fein equality of treatment. Mr McGuinness said the republican leadership “had put their necks on the line and taken significantly more risks than anyone else”, and feared the Government now wanted to hang them out to dry.
He asked why were the same questions not being asked of Ian Paisley, the then DUP leader, and his relationship with the armed Ulster Resistance?
In response Mr Ancram said “decommissioning was not a hurdle which the Government was seeking to erect… the practical reality was that most other parties would not sit down with Sinn Fein until substantial progress on the issue was made”.
The record continued: “We were not seeking the IRA’s surrender but the issue could not be ducked. We wanted to make progress in a number of parallel areas, including further de-escalatory measures and political progress, but part of this process had to be progress on decommissioning.”
The memo details how the discussion then turned to the modalities of decommissioning. Mr Ancram ran through the possibilities of verification, independent supervision, methods and legal and practical considerations, emphasising that the Government had an open mind on such issues as the involvement of third parties and the establishment of a commission, reporting to both Governments, if necessary with overseas representation.
“Mr McGuinness said that Sinn Fein had given no detailed consideration to these sorts of issues,” he added.
“Their position was that if the right political conditions were created in which the relevant organisations had the confidence to decommission arms, the then logistics of the process would be a very simple matter to agree.
“He agreed to accept a Government paper on the issue, which was then handed over, and undertook to consider it personally.”
The IRA ceasefire of 1994 lasted until the London Docklands bomb in February 1996. In July 1997 the IRA announced a second, lasting ceasefire.
A new round of peace talks, including Sinn Fein, resumed two months later in September. None of the five unionist or loyalist parties attended and attempted to get Sinn Fein excluded.
Talks continued at Stormont as David Trimble and the UUP began to participate.
Negotiations and sporadic violence by loyalist and republican splinter groups continued until the Good Friday Agreement was signed in May 1998.
IRA decommissioning began in 2001 and continued until 2005. THE Irish Government’s decision to meet Gerry Adams after the IRA ceasefire showed “indecent haste”, British Government officials said.
Former Taoiseach Albert Reynolds shook hands with the Sinn Fein president and SDLP leader John Hume following a meeting in Dublin a week after the 1994 ceasefire.
Confidential briefings from the Northern Ireland Office (NIO), released by the Public Record Office of Northern Ireland, said a meeting between Mr Reynolds, Mr Adams and Mr Hume following the ceasefire was considered “to reflect indecent haste, although clearly designed to tie Adams into a process from which he personally would not be able to escape, no matter what the republican movement did”.
The IRA had declared a ceasefire in August 1994, followed by the main loyalist terrorists in October that year. It led to the beginning of public contact between the British and Irish Governments and Sinn Fein.
Exploratory talks between the British Government and Sinn Fein commenced before Christmas that year.
In 1995 Sinn Fein was to receive further international recognition from US President Bill Clinton (above) when he gave Mr Adams authority to make a fundraising tour. While in the States, Mr Adams met future President Donald Trump. In February 1995 the British and Irish Governments signed a Frameworks document on the peace process.
It set out guiding principles including: self-determination; consent of the governed; “that agreement must be pursued and established by exclusively democratic, peaceful means, without resort to violence or coercion”; and “that any new political arrangements must be based on full respect for and protection and expression of, the rights and identities of both traditions in Ireland and even-handedly afford both communities in Northern Ireland parity of esteem and treatment, including equality of opportunity and advantage”.
The NIO files said Frameworks met with a “generally favourable” response from nationalist parties, a “bitterly antagonistic” reaction from mainstream unionism and the Alliance Party, while the Churches, business community and loyalist parties adopted varying positions of “less than outright rejection”.
Rumours of an Ulster Unionist Party leadership challenge surfaced but there appeared to be uncertainty over the direction the party might take.
The Government’s assessment of the DUP said: “Apocalyptic analysis of the Frameworks was a balance between outrage at the unacceptability of the proposals and triumph at the extent to which their predictions of constitutional disaster had been proved right.”