Agreement `will not be changed'

There will be no "tinkering about with the Good Friday Agreement", the Minister for the Foreign Affairs said yesterday evening…

There will be no "tinkering about with the Good Friday Agreement", the Minister for the Foreign Affairs said yesterday evening. Speaking on RTE's Five Seven Live programme, Mr Andrews, said making "tinkering" changes to the agreement "simply [wasn't] on".

"It's not on the agenda and it can't be on the agenda,' he said.

The two governments had clearly set out that they had invested "so much of their time in the agreement", and they had an obligation to "press on with the will of the people", he said.

He also said "dictats" from either government "would not resolve anything particularly in the context of politics on the island of Ireland North and South.

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He said nothing would move without a resolution of the issue of the lack of trust between Mr Trimble and Mr Adams. This "must be addressed and must be resolved", he said.

"I think that that's one of the main focuses of his [the Taoiseach's] upcoming talks with Mr Blair . . . And we have tried to resolve it with the document The Way Forward . . . but that hasn't worked.

So now the British Prime Minister and the Taoiseach will address this issue . . . they will decide on the agenda for the review, the timetable for the review, the length of time that the review will take."