Consent is key principle, says Bruton

REAL progress in the peace process could be made if the republican movement accepted the fundamental principle of consent, the Taoiseach said at the weekend.

Mr Bruton described the republican approach to the talks as a "military negotiation" with the IRA on one side, the British government on the other and everybody else in between.

All the other parties approached the process as a "political negotiation" and this was "the core divergence of assumptions which is at [the heart of the present difficulties."

The Taoiseach also stressed that if a peace agreement was to endure there had to be a "prior process of forgiveness and reconciliation". The victims of Bloody Sunday had to be heard, as did the victims of republican and loyalist violence.

He was speaking in Dublin at a weekend youth conference on Northern Ireland, organised by Young Fine Gael and hosted by the US ambassador, Mrs Jean Kennedy Smith, at her residence in Phoenix Park.

Sixty delegates, representing the youth wings of most of the main political parties in the Republic, Northern Ireland and Britain, attended. The DUP did not attend and an invitation to Sinn Fein was withdrawn by Young Fine Gael because of the most recent acts of republican violence, particularly the killing of a British soldier in Bessbrook, south Armagh.

Mr Bruton told the delegates it was his own "strong belief" that the republican movement must, sooner or later, "accept the principle of consent. Once it does that, the problem of decommissioning will cease to be a roadblock, because, by accepting consent, republicans will change the nature of their assumptions about the peace process, and decommissioning will be a natural concomitant of the new approach, not an imposed precondition."

Mr Bruton said his definition of consent was that the constitutional position of Northern Ireland would not change without the agreement of a majority.

Sinn Fein, he said, "sees itself approaching a military negotiation with important political objectives and consequences. All the other participants see themselves approaching a political negotiation with some paramilitary aspects that need to be sorted out to facilitate political agreement."

If one party to the "multidimensional consensus building process" retained the right to hold and use guns to influence the outcome, "that makes the job of reaching consensus more difficult."

This, on the other hand, does not of course apply where the negotiations are approached with a predominantly military mindset." But that was the core divergence in the current difficulties.

Forgiveness and reconciliation were necessary if an agreement was to endure. "That is why I believe that the victims of Bloody Sunday must be heard. They must be allowed to tell their story of injustice, and have that injustice acknowledged by its perpetrators.

"Only then can forgiveness begin. And it is only when forgiveness has begun at reconciliation can commence.

He said that other victims must be heard, too. The IRA's victims must be heard, and the injustice to them acknowledged by the perpetrators. The same applied to the victims of loyalist violence.

"Apologies should go in both directions across the political divide. That is what parity of esteem means.