Angry Bruton says decision to allow march a mistake he cannot understand

A CLEARLY upset and angered Taoiseach yesterday condemned the decision to allow the Drumcree march to proceed. He made a strong appeal for restraint, a return to dialogue and the rule of law in the North.

"Restraint is the most effective argument", Mr Bruton stressed repeatedly. He described the decision to allow the march to proceed as a serious mistake and the failure to allow talks to defuse the situation as a wasted opportunity.

"A state can never yield to the threat of the use of force", he warned at a press conference in the Irish Embassy. He was in Paris to meet the French President, Mr Jacques Chirac.

Mr Bruton said that in the discussions he was due to have last night with the British Prime Minister, Mr John Major, he would be asking for an explanation of the decision to allow the march through, one "that I am unable to comprehend".

He deplored the failure of the RUC to allow the talks with residents and church leaders to run their full course. "Agreement could have been reached", the Taoiseach said.

Mr Bruton started by reading the Government statement issued simultaneously in Paris and Dublin. Asked if he felt the RUC's treatment of the residents represented an act of bad faith. Mr Bruton said he believed the talks should have been allowed to take their course. The decision to allow the march proceed had been "precipitate" and a "mistake".

On the likely response of the IRA, Mr Bruton said restraint "was still the most effective of all arguments and it can be seen that public opinion is more influenced by restraint than it is by provocations".

Mr Bruton refused to condemn the RUC, saying. "We're talking here about an individual decision, not about the force as a whole. I believe the individual decision was mistaken but I'm not going to cast judgment on the force as a whole."

Asked if he feared for the peace process, the Taoiseach said events of recent days "illustrated the depths of the divisions that exist in Northern Ireland. The marches themselves, the insignia, the ceremonial, are themselves all symbolic of an attitude of mind that is not inclusive of both communities, an exclusive point of view, that of one community of its own interests to the exclusion of the other.

"What I think recent days demonstrate is how difficult the problem is, how deep is the division and how much of an achievement it was to have got all of the parties together at the same table, to have created an agreement wherein all were able to take part, with the exception of one party because of the continuation of the violence of the IRA", he said.

The lesson of this mistaken decision, Mr Bruton said, was that the problems arose precisely because dialogue was blocked. "We must return to the path of dialogue and agreement rather than the assertion of abstract and exclusive rights."

He spoke of the need for political leaders to speak courageously to their supporters and tell them we need a different way forward". "While it is comparatively easy to confront in politics one's opponents, it is much more difficult to confront one's supporters and tell them that they are wrong and that they must change."

Asked if it was right for a police force to succumb to the pressure of numbers, Mr Bruton said. "No. Absolutely not. It's my very strong belief, as the leader of the Irish State which has existed as a democracy based on the rule of law for longer than all but three other European states, that the state can never yield to force or the threat of force on the streets."