Setting the record straight over talks

Sir — It is important to keep the historical record straight, so that it is not misused in the political arguments of today.

Eoghan Harris (Sunday Independent, July 2) is correct in stating in reply to a reader’s letter that the Good Friday Agreement (unlike, say, the 1921 Treaty) was never signed, but that a number of copies of the last text circulated were autographed by participants in the negotiations for souvenir purposes and further copied.

Harris is misinformed in identifying me as someone who told Bertie Ahern to stand firm when Ulster Unionists — predictably — rejected the over-lengthy menu of matters for North-South co-operation and for specific implementation bodies, in the draft text of the agreement tabled at the beginning of the final week of negotiations, the main impetus for which incidentally did not come from the Department of Foreign Affairs.

It got through on the basis that the SDLP wanted it and the usual argument used for ambitious negotiating positions that they contained some fat that could later be cut back on.

In the light of that second point, I am sceptical that anyone in the Irish Government delegation would have strongly urged maintenance of that maximalist position, at the price of an imminent breakdown of the talks, after it had been rejected out of hand by the Ulster Unionist Party.

At all events, I was not present at any such discussion with the then Taoiseach, and none such is recorded in his autobiography. I was glad that he moved swiftly, as was his wont, to a more realistic position after his return from his mother’s funeral.

While primarily responsible for the political content of the constitutional accommodation, I had expressed the view at a meeting in late December 1997 at Dennis Rogan’s house in Belfast, when senior Irish officials met privately with Ulster Unionist politicians, that the Irish Government would need a minimum of six North-South bodies, and this was the eventual outcome.

At this period, Eoghan Harris was one of David Trimble’s backroom advisers (as is documented by him in Henry McDonald’s book on Trimble). Even allowing for that, I am puzzled by his claim that Foreign Affairs Minister Simon Coveney is “in the Peter Barry pannationalist mould”.

Peter Barry, who was a widely respected Foreign Minister in the second FitzGerald administration from 1982 to 1987 and at the time of the Anglo-Irish Agreement of 1985 and its immediate aftermath, was dealing only with other constitutional nationalists in the SDLP north of the Border, and had no relationship with Sinn Fein, which was excluded from the political arena at the time by the ongoing IRA campaign. Martin Mansergh,

Tipperary, Co Tipperary

Eoghan Harris writes: It would take an essay to deal fully with Martin Mansergh’s letter.

Suffice to say, I accept his correction that he did not advise Bertie Ahern to “stand firm”.

On the basis of George Mitchell’s ‘Making Peace’, I reject his interpretation that DFA officials were not involved.

His point about Peter Barry makes no sense as you don’t need to negotiate with Sinn Fein to be a pan-nationalist.