Arms issue to be "talked through" - Bruton

THE decommissioning of arms was one of the "deeply divisive issues" to be "talked through" after the start of all party talks on June 10th, the Taoiseach, Mr Bruton, acknowledged in Washington yesterday.

He was the main guest at the traditional St Patrick's Day Speaker's lunch on Capitol Hill, which was attended by the US Vice President, Mr Al Gore, and, for the first time, both the SDLP leader, Mr John Hume, and the Ulster Unionist Party leader, Mr David Trimble.

The Taoiseach has been invited to address the joint session of Congress next Spring. The invitation was extended to Mr Bruton by the speaker of the House of Representatives, Mr Newt Gingrich, during yesterday's lunch.

Mr Bruton told the assembled audience that the Government was not going to allow the all party talks to be logjammed on the one issue of decommissioning. "We will make sure that the talks process is balanced," he said.

The Taoiseach and his spokesman resolutely refused to comment on the criticisms of the Government's handling of the peace process by Mr Gerry Adams in yesterday's Irish Times.

Meanwhile, a number of unexpected hitches marred the smooth running of the big occasion on Capitol Hill. Mr Hume and Mr Trimble's party, who arrived separately, were awarded parity of esteem by the massive security cordon outside the Congress building by being turned away initially when they tried to enter.

The Speaker, Mr Gingrich, found the Taoiseach talking to reporters when he arrived to greet his main guest. As Mr Bruton continued speaking, unaware of his presence, Mr Gingrich joked: "I was simply studying your technique - watching a master in action." Mr Bruton replied that part of the technique was to give long answers. "Wasn't it very good? Then they will never get to ask supplementaries."

On his way in to the lunch, Mr Bruton told journalists nobody pretended the difficulties that had to be solved after June 10th were easy. "There are some deeply divisive issues that are going to have to be talked through, but the place to talk them through is at the talks table, not through the media or in other forms of discourse, but people coming together and discussing their problems."

Asked if decommissioning was one of those deeply divisive problems, Mr Bruton acknowledged that it was. It was an issue on which there were very, very entrenched views on either side.

"There is, of course, the republican IRA view that they don't want to see decommissioning at this point. But, equally, there are fears expressed by political parties representing those who have been, perhaps, at the receiving end of IRA weaponry in the past, that those weapons shouldn't be around to affect the political process in any way. That is one of the issues which has to be tackled at the beginning of the talks."

But, Mr Bruton said, it was not the only issue. It had been made very clear in the Downing Street joint communique, which set the date of June 10th, that while the Mitchell principles and the issue of removing threats from politics had to be dealt with very early on in the agenda, all the participants also needed to be convinced that there would be a genuine negotiation on all the other issues.