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Positive Agenda or Just Waiting for PM? Dec 1 2003
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By Ciaran McKeown Political Correspondent


THE political spotlight will be focused on Castle Buildings at Stormont this afternoon, when the DUP meets Secretary of State Paul Murphy for talks which may shed some light on whether early devolution is possible.



The meeting is part of Mr Murphy's ''stock-taking exercise'' in the wake of the election. He met the pro-Agreement leaders, David Trimble, UUP, Gerry Adams, Sinn Fein, and Mark Durkan, SDLP, at Hillsborough on Saturday.

With conflicting signals still emerging from the DUP, the antennae of the political community will be acutely tuned to sense the context for renewed efforts to restore devolution.

DUP leader Ian Paisley has staked out the most uncompromising line, yet seemed in almost playful form in an interview with the Sunday Telegraph.

"I may be in the driving seat but I don't necessarily have to drive,'' he said.

"I can sit in that seat with a poker in my hands and give Tony Blair a poke in the ribs but I don't need to come with any formula or solutions.''

However, his deputy, Peter Robinson was quick to stress that the DUP had a ''positive agenda for change''.

He rejected the label of a ''party of wreckers'' and asked: ''Do they really believe voters in Northern Ireland would have voted for a party of wreckers?''

Mr Robinson insisted that republicans must not be allowed in government until the IRA is dismantled.

"They must stand down their terror machines - they must hand over their weapons of destruction that have been held illegally,'' he said.

The DUP has campaigned for the Good Friday Agreement to be renegotiated. Both governments have ruled this out and around 70 per cent of those elected to the new Assembly are pro-Agreement.

The DUP's claim on the issue relates entirely to the functioning of the twin majorities (within unionism and nationalism) required for key aspects of the Agreement's operation.

The party has explicitly accepted the principle behind this - namely, that any deal must command the support of both unionists and nationalists.

Nigel Dodds has referred to ''renegotiation, review, call it what you will'' and the review process does offer wide scope for negotiating changes to the operation of the institutions set up in light of the Agreement.

There is, therefore, scope for a kind of ''verbal loyalism'' to match ''verbal republicanism'' in the weeks and months of talks ahead and, as one DUP spokesman told me recently: ''We can read between the lines.''

With Sinn Fein now the majority nationalist party, the real negotiation - by proxy, of course - will be over IRA decommissioning.

The DUP may find the SDLP a much more aggressive ally on this issue than it has been for David Trimble's UUP.

The shift in power from the SDLP to Sinn Fein is partly a function of generational change and partly due to the overwhelming conviction within the nationalist community that republicans have crossed irreversibly from physical-force republicanism into constitutional nationalism.

It is, therefore, in the SDLP's interest to focus on this, and Mr Durkan said that ''parties who have an increased mandate must show responsibility to break the deadlock'', code words for a decisive breakthrough on the issue which wrecked the October Hillsborough sequence.

Mr Murphy, meanwhile, reiterated that the fundamental principles of the Agreement must remain.

He will write tomorrow to all the parties, inviting them to put forward proposals for the review process. In the light of responses, he hopes to be able to initiate the review in early January.

Mr Murphy said nothing could alter the principles of power-sharing between nationalism and unionism, north-south relationships or that the principle of consent was central to politics in Northern Ireland.

"The Agreement says we should review the operation, the workings of the Good Friday Agreement," he said.

"What it gives is an opportunity to the parties in the Assembly to talk about the issues that affect them.''

He rejected Sinn Fein leader Mr Adams' request for an early lifting of suspension of the Assembly, saying it was ''highly unlikely'' that the parties could agree to form an Executive within the six-week time period.

Taoiseach Bertie Ahern, while echoing Mr Murphy's affirmation of the Agreement's fundamentals, offered a positive perspective on the DUP's participation.

"The election has thrown up some imponderables that we just have to now manage our way through," he said.

"But that is the will of the people of Northern Ireland and now the two governments have to get on with it.''

The DUP had identified shortfalls in the Agreement over accountability, stability, efficiency and effectiveness that could be looked at, he said.

"They are issues that I have no problem dealing with. I think stability is a fair enough issue for he DUP to argue about.''

He said that ''success brings responsibility'' and that progress had to be inclusive if the British Government was to be persuaded that it was worth reviving the devolved institutions.

"What the Irish government would like to see is that we now get into this review. It can't change fundamentals but it can deal with the operation of the last number of years of the Agreement.

"I respect everybody's mandate, including the DUP, and I look forward to trying to build on the success that has been the peace process,'' he said.

c.mckeown@newsletter.co.uk














Trimbleites Furious as Donaldson Still Hovers Dec 1 2003
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WHILE the main political focus will be on the DUP's meeting with Northern Ireland Secretary Paul Murphy today, an equally important meeting takes place at Parliament Buildings when the 2003 class of UUP MLAs meets for the first time.

Top of the agenda will be the leadership of David Trimble, following a direct challenge by Lagan Valley rival Jeffrey Donaldson.

Mr Donaldson repeated his line that the party ''could not unite'' under Mr Trimble, called on him to resign and declared that, if there were a vacancy, he would consider being a candidate.

However, the mood in the pro-Trimble ranks is, if anything, more furious with Mr Donaldson and his colleagues than with the DUP, and one senior member went so far as to suggest that they would be far better off by booting out the five identifiable dissidents and having a united party than continuing with the prolonged effort to paper over the cracks.

Even if Mr Trimble were to go, the anger towards Mr Donaldson would make him an unlikely winner of any immediate contest.

There is no sign of any ''compromise candidate'' who could unite the two sections of the party.

The so-called ''dream ticket'' of Empey-Donaldson went up in smoke during the summer's mediation process and staunchly pro-Trimble MLA Michael McGimpsey might be even more unacceptable to some of the dissidents than Mr Trimble himself.

The indications last night were that, while the matter may not be sorted out immediately, Mr Trimble, freed from primary responsibility for delivering devolution, will set out to unify, discipline and reorganise the party in preparation for the next election.

The clear implication of this stance is that he may invite a challenge at the meeting of the MLAs on who should be the group's leader and demand outright loyalty under pain of expulsion.

On current figures, he would defeat Mr Donaldson by a country mile. So, the latter may prefer to wait until the next Ulster Unionist Council meeting to make a formal bid.

However, both the MLAs and the party's activists and apparatchiks know that even a few weeks of internal self-destruct behaviour could plunge the party into the kind of unelectable condition suffered by pre-Blair Labour and post-Major Tories.

Mr Trimble has gone out of his way in the last six years to accommodate dissent. His supporters see him as a skilful and dogged fighter with external adversaries: what they want to see now is a much more ruthless streak in dealing with internal adversaries.

Whether he has what it takes for that may begin to be seen today.












Police Parents' Moving Tribute

Dec 1 2003
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By Ian Starrett



COURAGEOUS sons and daughters who were murdered by terrorists over 30 years of violence while they served as RUC officers were remembered yesterday.

The Royal Ulster Constabulary George Cross Parents' Association held a Service of Thanksgiving in their memory at St Maccartin's Cathedral in Enniskillen - the place of worship that most officers attended during their time at the RUC Training Centre in the town.

At yesterday's service, former Chief Constable Sir Ronnie Flanagan, Patron of the Parents' Association, unveiled a plaque dedicated to the honour and memory of the murdered RUC officers.

The wording on the plaque said that it was erected in loving memory of: 'Our children who were murdered as a direct result of terrorist violence'.

The thanksgiving service was conducted by Rev Precentor Brian Courtney, together with representatives from the other main churches.

David Wilson, Parents' Association chairman, said that yesterday was the first time the parents, as an association, had the opportunity to mark the loss of their children.

He said that it was a very emotional occasion for everyone involved.

"As well as being police officers, these men and women were our young sons and daughters. You can never come to terms with the loss of a child,'' said Mr Wilson.

The RUC George Cross Parents' Association was set up by the Northern Ireland Police Fund as a support group for the parents of murdered police officers.

It currently looks after the interests weof more than 60 parents.

i.starrett@lineone.net













http://news.bostonhe...bg?articleid=98
DUP victory throws pact into disarray
By Jim Dee/Irish Times
Monday, December 1, 2003

BELFAST, Northern Ireland - Sure it's a mess - but not like before.



That's been the message Britain's Northern Ireland Secretary Paul Murphy has circulated since Ian Paisley's anti-peace-pact Democratic Unionist Party became Northern Ireland's largest party in last week's assembly election.



``A decade ago, people were killing each other here at a pretty awful rate and the place was economically depressed. . . . Those things have changed,'' Murphy said to the Herald yesterday.



``But that doesn't underestimate the challenges and the difficulties that we're facing as a result of the election.''



The ``difficulties'' ahead are, in fact, enormous.



The DUP boycotted talks leading to 1998's Good Friday agreement. Since then, it has vowed to destroy the accord and force the negotiation of a new pact if it ever were to eclipse the pro-accord Ulster Unionists as the largest pro-British party.



The DUP now holds a 30- to 27-seat advantage over the Ulster Unionists. In the last assembly, it trailed the UU by 28 seats to 20.



UU chief David Trimble is now facing calls for his resignation.



Together with UU dissidents who oppose the accord, the DUP-led bloc can effectively veto Cabinet formation for the forseeable future. This is because the accord requires governments to win majority backing within both the unionist and pro-Irish nationalist camps.



If a Cabinet isn't formed within six weeks, Britain will have to either call a new election or reinstate the suspension it imposed in October 2002 amid an Irish Republican Army spying scandal.



London and Dublin have already begun new talks with parties, but they insist DUP demands for a new peace deal won't be met.



``That's not going to happen,'' Murphy said, stressing the accord is ``an international treaty. The Irish government changed its constitution. We changed certain things as well.''



Murphy believes the DUP will eventually come around.



``Yes, they've got new (electoral) mandates. But with new mandates there are also responsibilities. And what you say before an election isn't always what you have to do after one - if you want power,'' he said.



But the DUP's Ian Paisley Jr., who like his 78-year-old father easily won re-election in the ``Bible Belt'' of North Antrim, said Murphy is in fantasy land.



``Paul Murphy and pro-agreement parties are in denial,'' the younger Paisley told the Herald. ``They actually still think the agreement is living. The agreement is dead.''



Paisley said the DUP will never soften its demand that the IRA fully disarm and disband before it accedes to forming a government with Sinn Fein.



``If the governments think that the chains of power and ministerial chauffeur-driven cars are what we're in this for, then they've truly miscalculated,'' he added.



``We're interested in getting a fair deal for our people.''



But Sinn Fein is now the largest nationalist party, with a 24-18 edge in seats over the rival Social Democratic Labor Party - the mirror opposite of each party's previous strength. And it says it's the DUP that is in fantasy land if it thinks it can dictate terms to the IRA.



``The DUP won't be able to usurp the Good Friday agreement,'' said Sinn Fein's Alec Maskey, who stunned everyone by winning a seat in unionist South Belfast.



``And the sooner they're exposed for having absolutely no alternative to offer, the better for all of us.''











http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,20...-913520,00.html The Sunday Times - Ireland

November 30, 2003

Focus: Forward to the past

As Ian Paisley senior is voted in at the first count of the elections, placing Stormont within his reach, Liam Clarke ponders the fly in the ointment that is Sinn Fein



Ian Paisley could hardly contain his glee. He bounded into the North Antrim count centre in Ballymoney, flanked by his wife Eileen and son, Ian. It was a moment of personal and political triumph and he was beside himself with joy.
“It’s a great day for Ulster,” he roared from beneath his scarlet golfing umbrella, “It takes a Paisley to beat a Paisley.” He and Ian junior had both been elected on the first count.



Paisley was tickled pink as it became clear that the post of first minister at Stormont was within his grasp. But even in the Paisley stronghold of north Antrim, there was a fly in the ointment.

“Don’t blame me,” the Big Man said, suddenly defensive. “It was the SDLP who lay down in bed with them and it was also Mr Trimble, who I understand had twelve hours with them on the Sabbath day on a sofa. I am not the blood brother of Sinn Fein, they are, and if their candidates do well at their expense, that is their business.”

Paisley spent much of the rest of the day cocooned in a bubble of DUP triumph. On the rare moments when he was forced out of it by press inquiries, he was in full denial.When Ivan Little of UTV asked him about Sinn Fein, he buttonholed the reporter and shouted: “I’m not talking to Sinn Fein and anybody that talks to Sinn Fein will be out of my party.”

As the DUP outstripped the more moderate Ulster Unionist Party, so too did Sinn Fein outstrip the SDLP. In his own north Antrim constituency, Philip McGuigan took a seat for Sinn Fein. Unexpected republican gains were being repeated across the province.

Paisley might have thunderously warned against doing business with Sinn Fein, but behind the rhetoric is a more practical reality. If there is a DUP first minister in the new Assembly, a Sinn Fein deputy will stand by his side. Despite the rhetoric, the party has done business with Sinn Fein in the past. After years of pledging to smash Sinn Fein” Paisley could see the republican party just over two percentage points behind him. For much of the last four years the DUP has been in government with Sinn Fein, and he himself chaired an agriculture committee on which Sinn Fein members sat.

Even as the election results were counted, Paisley’s party colleagues were exchanging views on television discussion panels with Sinn Fein.

The DUP tries to keep a distance using certain devices, such as addressing the chair rather than Sinn Fein members directly. However, the two parties share platforms on the media. Ways are being found round the “don’t talk to Sinn Fein rule”, and conflict between the two parties is being minimised.

When a raucous DUP crowd interrupted an acceptance speech by Sinn Fein’s Bairbre de Brun, Peter Robinson and Nigel Dodds, two DUP MPs moved in to shut them up. For a second it looked as though the DUP was rushing to the Sinn Fein woman’s defence.

Robinson later explained his unexpected intervention, claiming that the crowd had been cheering as Dodds’ wife Diane was elected, and that he feared their cries would be interpreted as support of de Brun.




STEPHEN KING, one of David Trimble’s advisers, suggests the DUP is 6 years behind the Ulster Unionist Party: “The DUP is articulating UUP policy circa 1997”.

The stance the DUP is taking is one that his party took during the negotiations for the Good Friday Agreement. Then Trimble made a play of not talking to Sinn Fein, although he dealt with them through intermediaries. He sat across a table from Sinn Fein when required.

Trimble was roundly denounced for his treacherous engagement by the DUP, which refused to take part in negotiations at all. At that time the DUP denounced such contacts as treachery and refused to take part in negotiations at all. Now the DUP is catching up, attempting to play 1998 all over again, claiming that it will achieve a better outcome than the UUP.

The party kept Paisley off the television as much as possible. It talked about “a new agreement” rather than no agreement, and “an end to pushover unionism.”

The DUP has a core vote of outright rejectionists. It is its message of renegotiation, of rolling the clock back and starting again, which has swung the floating voters that the party needed to overtake the UUP.

Fred Cobain, an Ulster Unionist MLA who supported the agreement and is disillusioned with its implementation, explained the feeling within unionism: “The DUP wouldn’t be the largest party in unionism today if the IRA had said the war is over and had decommissioned at the proper time. Unionists bought into the agreement because they believed it was the end of paramilitarism, that there was going to be a completion of decommissioning and that the war was over.

“Nobody thought the agreement was going to allow paramilitaries to carry on what they had been doing.”

A survey commissioned by RTE’s Prime Time and carried out by Millward Brown Ulster interviewed 1,500 people who voted in last week’s election. The poll underestimated Sinn Fein’s vote by 3.5% but was well within the 3% margin of error for other parties, including the DUP.

Its survey of unionist opinion, which has not been previously published, can therefore be taken seriously. It showed that 89% of Protestants felt their quality of life had actually improved or had remained the same since the Good Friday Agreement was signed in 1998, and only 10% felt it had worsened.

The most startling finding was that, when asked: “As things stand today, do you think the party you first gave your preference vote should co-operate in forming a Northern Ireland Executive Government?”, 61% of DUP supporters and 83% of Ulster Unionists believed their parties should co-operate in forming an Assembly. Some voters may not have understood that this means sharing power with Sinn Fein.

When it came to how Northern Ireland should be governed, DUP voters were split more or less down the middle. 31% of DUP voters wanted to see the Good Friday Agreement scrapped altogether, while 61% wanted it renegotiated.

Cobain believes the predominant unionist view is that there is nothing wrong with the agreement. “If these two communities are going to work together then people know that compromises are going to have to be made all round. The difficulty for the unionists is that republican commitments were never honoured.”

Sammy Wilson, a DUP strategist, said that he believed new DUP voters were discontented with the agreement but did not expect history to be rolled back.

“The main thing we are being asked to do is to stop further concessions to republicanism,” he said. He pointed out that the DUP was also being asked to ensure that Sinn Fein would not be in government without the dismantling of the IRA, the completion of decommissioning and a final breach with paramilitarism.

Wilson said: “We are not going to be put in the same trap as the Ulster Unionists, a position where we are the ones forced to make concessions because they have the armaments.”

The DUP has a strategy for negotiations which is being kept a closely guarded secret. The party has put forward a number of models of devolved government: one is a voluntary coalition, which would not include Sinn Fein initially, another is a form of administrative devolution which would include Sinn Fein in a non-cabinet system of government, which could later develop into full devolution.

The DUP is also said to be looking at processes through which Sinn Fein could show its good intentions by a process of IRA decommissioning, disbandment and statements of good intent. These will be backed up by effective sanctions for excluding the republicans from government if they break their undertakings.

It sounds similar to that which the Ulster Unionists tried in the the 1998 negotiations, but this time around the DUP is suffering from a number of handicaps.

First, many of the concessions which the IRA and Sinn Fein wanted were granted in 1998 and cannot now be revoked.

The prisoners are released, the RUC’s name is changed, and special branch is reformed. The only one remaining is the position of on-the-run terrorists, for which Sinn Fein has been offered amnesties once the IRA is finally wound up.

NEXT WEEK the British and Irish governments will begin a four-yearly review of the workings of the agreement.

The review can cover such things as the IRA’s failure to decommission, and changes in the “sufficient consensus” rule, which demands majority support amongst both unionist and nationalist members for an administration to be formed. This could open the way to a cross-community government without either Sinn Fein or the DUP, but neither can be safely excluded at this stage.

The prospects are for long negotiations as the DUP attempts to improve on what the UUP has achieved, and nationalists fight to prevent it rolling back the gains made under the agreement.

With Paisley around, making policy on the hoof and giving pledges to tie his party’s hands every time he steps in front of a camera, that process is likely to be arduous.

Currently the DUP is denying there is any prospect of him taking advantage of the high note that the election victory has provided to retire. However, nobody is prepared to guarantee that he will stay on till the end of 2004, and some point to the European elections in June — when Paisley traditionally achieves by far the highest vote in the province — as a likely moment of even greater triumph on which he could, if he wished, step aside with some honour.


















http://icnorthernire...-name_page.html
Face to Face

Dec 1 2003








THE political spotlight will be focused on Castle Buildings at Stormont this afternoon, when the DUP meets Secretary of State Paul Murphy for talks which may shed some light on whether early devolution is possible.



Mr Murphy met pro-Agreement leaders David Trimble, Gerry Adams and Mark Durkan at Hillsborough on Saturday as part of postelection stock-taking.

Mr Trimble said a clear majority favoured the Agreement, Mr Adams called for the lifting of suspension and Mr Durkan urged those with an increased mandate to break the deadlock.



DUP leader Ian Paisley indicated that he was in no hurry to talk to anybody.

''I can sit in the driving seat with a poker and give Tony Blair a poke in the ribs but I don't need to come up with any solutions,'' he said.

















http://www.unison.ie...&issue_id=10106

Fundamental changes not on, Ahern warns DUP
THE Democratic Unionist Party was reminded yesterday by Taoiseach Bertie Ahern that "success brings responsibility" but said there was scope for discussion on many issues.

And he said he will be asking DUP leader Ian Paisley and deputy leader Peter Robinson to Dublin for post-election talks on the Good Friday Agreement. The Assembly elections had thrown up "some imponderables" which they would all have to work their way through. But, he said, that was the will of the people of Northern Ireland and now the two governments "have to get on with it".

"Tony Blair and I agreed on Friday morning that we would seek to meet all of the parties and that we would not take an absolutist view. I would gladly meet them with Tony Blair or separately - whatever way the parties agree to meet," he said.

The Taoiseach pointed out that the Agreement was not up for re-negotiation but for review. His position was clear about re-negotiation, "and it's a position fully shared by the British government.

"It should be appreciated we still have just over 30 people, out of the 108 elected to this Assembly-to-be, that are anti-Agreement. Over 70pc are pro-Agreement."

The review, he said, would not be of the fundamentals of the Agreement, but of its operation.

"The kind of issues that the DUP have stated in their own policy have been issues around stability, effectiveness, efficiency, accountability. They are issues that are fair to talk about. They are issues that I don't have disagreement with.

"The DUP say we have to improve on stability. Well, they're right because we've had four breakdowns in the last five-six years, so therefore there's a problem of stability - we have no argument about that."

The Taoiseach said the two governments would be writing to all the parties to ask them to put forward their views of how the Agreement has worked to date and to give their opinions on how the process should move forward.

But he was emphatic that no fundamental changes would be made to the original Agreement.

"A fundamental change of this cannot happen. We're not going back to majoritarian rule, we're not going back to something that will not be accepted by the nationalists."

Mr Ahern also said the question of the Provisional IRA and decommissioning still had to be sorted out.

"The ambiguity of the position of the Provisional IRA still has to be dealt with. The Acts of completion of October 2002 were to deal with that issue. It still has to be completed. I think Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness accept that. It's a very important matter."

Gene McKenna
Political Editor









http://www.thescotsm...m?id=1320372003

Ian Paisley must step out of the trenches for the sake of peace

DUNCAN HAMILTON


THE result of the elections to the Northern Ireland Assembly are momentous. Only a few years ago, Gerry Adams was not even allowed to speak on the BBC. Now he speaks for the majority of Nationalist voters in Northern Ireland. Until recently, Ian Paisley led a Democratic Unionist Party which had the appearance of a bitter and bigoted sect. Now he speaks for the majority of Unionist voters in the province.

The implications of this result are obvious. The largest party in Northern Ireland politics is now one which opposes the Good Friday Agreement. That agreement requires the first minister to be nominated by the DUP and the deputy first minister to be nominated by Sinn Fein. Paisley and Adams are simply not going to form a governing coalition. In fact, Paisley has ruled out working with Sinn Fein under any circumstances.

The pessimism surrounding the prospects for restoring devolved government is thus understandable. Nevertheless, this result was an absolutely necessary staging post on the journey to normality in Northern Ireland. This result, dreadful as it seems, needed to happen.

For the critics of the Good Friday Agreement are now centre-stage. There is nowhere for the DUP to run and now no-one else to blame. As David Trimble put it, the DUP can "no longer afford the luxury of opposition". Paisley is now responsible for more than headline-grabbing stunts. He or one of his lieutenants must mature into a genuine leader with a positive agenda. If that does not happen, and I do not hold much hope that it will, the extremist and bitter tendency in the Unionist community will be exposed to the full glare of a population desperate for progress.

If the DUP refuses to work within the mandate it has been given and in so doing creates a political void which allows an escalation of terror on the streets of Northern Ireland, it will be an abdication of responsibility on a quite terrifying scale. It will do so in spite of the 70 per cent of voters who supported pro-agreement parties in the election.

It is absurd for the DUP to claim the mandate of the people in becoming the largest Unionist party and then ignore the same election results that illustrated continued support for the principles of the Good Friday Agreement. That double-think is no longer an available option for the DUP.

For Sinn Fein, there is a massive responsibility here not to box the DUP into a corner. Adams is cleverly selling Sinn Fein as the principal pro-agreement party. That has an element of cynicism about it, but it is also the right move, to reach out to the pro-agreement Unionist community. But the temptation to force the DUP into an extreme position will be there. However strong it becomes, it must be resisted.

This crisis needs leadership and vision. It needs a recognition that this is now a battle between those with a vision of the future under the Good Friday Agreement - with all its undoubted problems - and those with a desire to preserve the very status quo that has ensured decades of violence and misery.

The DUP is now out in the open, and will be forced to engage on a level and with a responsibility which it has never before had to face. That needed to happen if this process was not simply to stumble on, achieving nothing.

For the alternative to this election result was more of the same. In the short term that would have returned the more moderate UUP under Trimble, and the Nationalist SDLP under Mark Durkin. To Tony Blair and Bertie Ahern that might have seemed like success. But it would only have postponed the crisis by a few months or years.

Doubtless Trimble could have cobbled together a coalition. But his ultimate failure was assured unless and until the unflinching face of Paisley-led Unionism had been forced to take responsibility. The DUP has come to prominence asking the hard questions. Now it is for them to provide answers.

The DUP has one chance to get this right. If the Assembly ever does resume, it will be asked to govern for the whole of Northern Ireland. The party will be asked to step out of the political trenches and show a more mature character.

The people of Northern Ireland want peace and prosperity. They support the Good Friday Agreement. That is something the DUP will eventually have to accept if the peace process is to stand any chance. The sooner the DUP is forced into the spotlight to kick-start that debate the better.