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Change Your Life! |
Britain restores self-rule to Northern Ireland |
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May 31, 2000
"We hope these institutions will take root," Ulster Unionist Party leader David Trimble told a news conference at Stormont, the government's Belfast headquarters on Monday.
"I hope we've come over the Rubicon this time but again, with other events, we'll wait and see how things unfold." This is the second time in six months that Britain has returned a measure of self-rule to the province.
The Ulster Unionists' narrow approval Saturday of a return to Catholic-Protestant power-sharing cleared the way for Britain to restore the administrative authority it suspended in February just 11 weeks into its existence. The British minister for Northern Ireland, Peter Mandelson, had pulled the plug on the four-party Cabinet over the refusal of the outlawed Irish Republican Army to disarm.
But on Saturday, Trimble narrowly managed to persuade his badly divided party to give the IRA a chance to live up to its unprecedented pledge three weeks ago to begin putting its weapons "completely and verifiably beyond use" if the new provincial administration resumed.
After the vote, Trimble warned the IRA that it must deliver on its promise. Seamus Mallon, leader of the province's major Catholic party, the pacifist Social Democratic and Labor Party, also said the entire province must ensure that the newly reformed government - the centerpiece of the landmark 1998 peace agreement - is able to survive and function.
"The body politic, the community at large and the political process simply cannot take another ending of this administration and for that reason I think it will go, it will run and I hope it runs in the creative and imaginative way it was meant to do," said Mallon, the senior Catholic in the newly restored Cabinet.
Trimble and Mallon met Monday to prepare for the second transfer of power. The full Cabinet was scheduled to meet Thursday to get back to work.
However it remained uncertain whether the two hard-line Democratic Unionists ministers, who oppose the Good Friday agreement and object to sitting in the Cabinet with the IRA-allied Sinn Fein, will return to their desks. The hardline Protestant party's ruling council was due to meet Tuesday to decide.
Martin McGuinness, reputedly a former IRA chief of staff, is due to resume work as Sinn Fein's education minister in the Cabinet. He called on all the parties to demonstrate "sane and sensible leadership."
"We're living in a time where there is constant hope among the people," he said Monday. "Political leaders need to reflect the reality that there is a great opportunity for us all."
"We want to build a future for everybody," McGuinness added. "The question is, are we up to that task? I think we are. I think we can get this right."
Whether Northern Ireland's unlikely local coalition succeeds will depend largely on IRA actions. Sinn Fein declined to speculate on when the IRA would begin to reveal any of its secret weapons dumps to international inspectors. That was the most concrete commitment made by the outlawed group in its May 6 declaration to put its weapons "completely and verifiably beyond use." Authorities must also deal with the controversial issue of reforming Northern Ireland's police force and with potentially divisive questions such as whether to fly Britain's Union Jack flag over government buildings.
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