The following is an extract from a transcript of an interview with the Taoiseach carried on the Sunday Times's website:
Q: At the moment, without decommissioning, would Sinn Fein be an acceptable partner in government if the need arose for you to have another partner?
A: That is so hypothetical it is meaningless. In our view we have to try to deal with the situation as it is. The situation as it is is that within a matter of weeks we have to try to find some means of making sure that Sinn Fein are partners in the executive; that is what the challenge now is. What might happen in the dim distant future is fairly irrelevant.
Our view is that decommissioning in one form or another has to happen. I am on record in recent weeks and months as saying that it is not compatible with being a part of a government - I mean part of an executive - that there is not at least a commencement of decommissioning, and that would apply in the North, it would apply in the South. That is what we need to achieve.
The great task now is to see if we can construct, under John de Chastelain, some method of where we get through this. The big challenge is decommissioning versus the executive, but it is my view and the view of all those who are working with me that we are not going to get David Trimble to agree to the establishment of an executive or the formulation of the executive until we actually deal with the decommissioning issue in some form, even if that is in some fairly minor way.
Q: So you are saying: "Regardless of what it says in the agreement, the practical politics are that there can be no executive without a start to decommissioning."
A: Yes. I mean that is the practical politics because, while the agreement doesn't say that decommissioning is a precondition it certainly isn't a precondition and there is no doubt about that. (But) there are no time-scales (meaning start times) put in for everything else either. There is no time-scale put in for the human rights legislation, there is no time-scale for the policing commission report, there is no time-scale for the prison releases, there is no time-scale for the demilitarisation generally of army bases.
So therefore it is illogical and unfair and unreasonable to argue that there should be a time-scale for decommissioning, and it is even more illogical to argue that (this) is effectively April 9, 2000. You can't prioritise and bring forward and incrementally do everything and then say we won't even start on the first 0.001 per cent of this issue.
I think that is all we are saying. Nobody is saying that 50 per cent of the armaments have to be given up, or 60 per cent of the armaments. We are not saying anything other than the agreement states that we have an international commission of decommissioning, that de Chastelain should, because he is experienced at these matters, and those others with him, (be able) to construct some mechanism that gives credibility to whatever they construct, to allow everybody, not just the unionists, to see that what is in the agreement is meaningful. That is what it is. Indeed, that is the context it should be put in, not in the narrow context of "Trimble says: I can't move to the executive". It is the wider context of everybody's view that decommissioning would be part of the agreement and would incrementally move on under a construction under de Chastelain.
Q: To be absolutely clear, when you say decommissioning you mean a start to the destruction of weapons and a commitment to continue. That needs to be made before you can get (an executive) going?
A: Yeah. People say "does that mean physical, does that mean Semtex, does that mean guns?" It means that the principle has to be accepted and that then whatever modalities are worked by de Chastelain, because that is (his) expertise to work out how it actually happens, and that is what we mean.
Q: It doesn't have to be given to the RUC?
A: No, no.
Q: They could be burnt in a field, whatever?
A: Whatever they work out within the international commission.