Northern Secretary Peter Hain has defended his ability to act impartially in the North despite expressing views in the past that are anathema to unionists and sympathetic to republicanism.
He said his focus now was on entrenching the peace process rather than looking to the past. He hoped that the impending IRA response to Sinn Féin president Gerry Adams's call on the organisation to embrace peace and democracy would open up a "new chapter" in Northern Irish history.
He made his comments after BBC 1's Politics Show yesterday broadcast his views of the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s, where he opposed the partition of Ireland and urged the phased withdrawal of British troops from the North.
The programme cited the research of University of Ulster lecturer Dr Paul Dixon, who said he had uncovered evidence of Mr Hain's support for Irish republicanism up until the British Labour Party got into government in 1997.
Dr Dixon said: "Peter Hain is probably the most partisan secretary of state for Northern Ireland ever. Since 1972, he has been a critic of British policy towards Northern Ireland."
In the 1970s and 1980s Mr Hain was involved in the Time To Go movement, which advocated Britain's phased withdrawal leading to a united Ireland.
The programme quoted from a BBC Scotland programme in 1987 where Mr Hain said that a British government policy was required that "recognises that the historic partition of Ireland is the root of the problem, that Britain's presence in the North continues to be the main obstacle to the solution to the problem".
It also reported how in 1986 he wrote: "I think it's helpful, from the point of view of people who wish to seek a united Ireland, to have the loyalist community in open revolt against the Thatcher government. That is one of the preconditions for making advances." And how he wrote in 1988: "Any serious historical assessment of Britain's colonial and imperial presence in Ireland must conclude that the imposition of partition was and remains unjust and undemocratic."
The DUP and Ulster Unionist Party, who have met Mr Hain in meetings since his appointment, are generally aware that he expressed these views. DUP leader the Rev Ian Paisley, when he met him, made a cryptic remark about how Mr Hain would need to sharpen his grasp on politics and history.
Mr Hain in an interview with Jeremy Vine on The Politics Show did not renounce his former views but said his focus was on the present and future and consolidating the Belfast Agreement.
"What my job is, is to get on with getting the process of democratic politics back on the road, entrenching the peace settlement, and I ask you to judge me on my record," he said.
When he voiced these former views "there was no prospect at all of the kind of completely different life that I now see around me just today in Belfast or across Northern Ireland", he added.
