THE GOVERNMENT has asked Senior officials to seek a meeting with Sinn Fein. This is part of its response to what the Tanaiste yesterday called a betrayal of the nationalist community and an abandonment of principle by the British government.
The meeting with Sinn Fein would be intended "to explore ways of calming and stabilising the situation and to reopen the path for peace", Mr Spring said in Cork yesterday on his return from a two day visit to Greece and former Yugoslavia.
Mr Spring said the Government was also demanding a meeting of the Anglo Irish Conference, seeking a meeting with the SDLP, and "seeking the advice of the Church leaders who have played an important role".
He said that efforts to portray the RUC as impartial had suffered "almost irreparable damage".
The planned meeting with Sinn Fein will be the first official meeting for a considerable period of time. On June 16th last, the Government indicated that it had no more plans to meet Sinn Fein following the IRA killing of Garda Jerry McCabe in Adare, Co Limerick.
Mr Spring yesterday accused the British government of allowing loyalists to win advantages through duress, and sending out the message that "might is right". He criticised what he said was a total lack of consultation by the British government with the Irish Government, despite the governments being supposed to be "equal partners in promoting stability and peace
"People in the nationalist community are entitled to feel betrayed at the events of the last couple of days," he said.
"It has been a fundamental principle of British government policy ever since Sir Patrick Mayhew made his so called decommissioning speech in Washington that no one and I emphasise no one can be allowed to secure ad vantage through duress.
"We have shared that policy and I believe the overwhelming majority of people in Ireland were appalled to see it thrown over board in Drumcree. The message that might is right is precisely The wrong message for the British government to send and that's what they have done.
"We have consistently argued too that it is unfair to impose on the police a decision that is clearly a function of political leadership.
Putting the police in that false position has now done almost irreparable damage to the efforts which were being made to build trust in the impartiality of the RUC.
For many years now successive Irish Governments have consistently argued that the right to march must be exercised with a corresponding responsibility that marches must not take place in areas or along routes which are unacceptable to the people living there.
"I have always found ii inexplicable that any organisation committed to religious and civil liberties should want to impose a presence on those who find that hostile and threatening.
"It is now clear that there are some in Northern Ireland who are prepared to place tribal considerations above everything else and to trample on the feelings of those who should be their neighbours in pursuit of those considerations.
"It has also been a fundamental tenet of the way we have approached our relations in recent years that both governments' regard themselves as equal partners in promoting stability and peace.
"Such partnership requires consultation and sharing of information and yet there was no consultation whatsoever with us about the decision taken at Drumcree and the lower Ormeau Road and we were given no access to information that would help us understand the thinking behind these decisions despite our best efforts to elicit such information and consultation in the interests of stability .. . I have conveyed our feelings to the Secretary of State's office in the strongest terms."