The decommissioning of paramilitary weapons will come about only as a result of the Belfast Agreement and will not happen "as a prior event", the Fine Gael leader, Mr John Bruton, said. Decommissioning would happen "as a natural progression" if the agreement worked in a harmonious way.
The safe passage of the agreement in this month's referendum would also set Ireland on a road to peace and reconciliation and lead to a much more productive relationship with Britain. Addressing a press conference at the formal launch of the Fine Gael "Yes NO]stet Peace & Harmony" referendums campaign yesterday, he said the agreement created a "new, modern, inclusive and non-threatening definition of what it is to be Irish".
Meanwhile, in the era of mass communications, it was not possible to address different constituencies with different messages at the same time. Whatever the Taoiseach, Mr Ahern, said in Arbour Hill was heard in Sandy Row and whatever was said in the Ulster Hall was heard on the Falls Road.
Great creativity and restraint was needed in the language that was used in explaining the agreement.
Like the Amsterdam Treaty, the agreement aimed to build structures of peace. It created, for the first time, a fair structure for decision-making on the island.
"It respects the diversity of the Irish people. It respects the Britishness of the allegiance of the unionists. It respects the Irishness of the allegiance of the nationalists. It finds a way of devising institutions which reconcile both and allow both to co-operate with one another," Mr Bruton said. It was a radical rejection of the politics of the past and must be accepted with great strength and force by the Irish people. A resounding Yes vote was the best way forward.
"Peace does not happen by accident. Peace does not happen just because people have good intentions. Peace does not happen because of superior morality. Peace happens, and peace is maintained, because we have created a structure of interdependence. A structure so interdependent that the injury to your former antagonist is also an injury to yourself. That is what a structure of peace is", he said. The agreement built a structure of interdependence between unionist and nationalist, between North and South, and between both parts of Ireland and Britain, which would make conflict less likely and co-operation more likely. An "arc or crescent" of potential development stretched from Rosslare, through Dublin, to Belfast, Larne and across to Scotland that could provide thousands of new jobs once peace was firmly embedded on this island.
Approval of the Belfast Agreement, alongside ratification of the Amsterdam Treaty, could set Ireland off on an optimistic growth path into the new century.