Mallon says talks cannot depend on IRA decision

MR Seamus Mallon has described as "an absolute negation of the whole democratic process" suggestions that the Northern talks be put in abeyance until an IRA ceasefire is announced.

. Speaking on the RTE Prime Time programme last night, the SDLP deputy leader said he was "not prepared to put the political process in the North of Ireland, and indeed in the Republic of Ireland, in the White House and in Westminster, into mothballs until such time as the IRA are going to call a ceasefire.

He asked whether anyone was seriously suggesting that "the rest of us simply go and disappear go into abeyance until such time as the IRA decide that they are not going to play games with us?"

The position of both governments on an IRA ceasefire was "the right position . . . for all various reasons, not least the protection of the democratic process and sovereignty," he said.

"Are people saying that the SDLP and Irish Government are not capable of negotiating a political solution to the problems here and that unless Sinn Fein are present and I hope they are present somehow or another the nationalist or Irish position on this problem will go by default?"

He went on to say that he believed "the bones for an agreement is there. It is there in embryo form, in terms of the three strands. We know roughly the type of shape it will take. And irrespective of the attendance or not of whoever it may be, that is going to be the ultimate shape, of what we are going to agree in terms of structures and arrangements."

Responding on the same programme to what he described as "the patent good sense of Seamus Mallon", Mr Ken Maginnis of the UUP said he agreed with him on what he said about the major parties, North and South, getting together and not allowing themselves to "be dictated to by those who ultimately have the threat and recourse of violence to fall back on.

"If in fact they are over whelmed by the good sense of nationalists and unionists coming together, then I believe we will go ahead," he said.

Mr Peter Temple Morris, the Conservative MP and co-chairman of the Anglo Irish Interparliamentary Body, while agreeing with Mr Mallon, said that without the involvement of Sinn Fein and an IRA ceasefire, "You don't deliver the peace."

Later Mr Mallon said the Irish Government had "bent over backward to get SF into the negotiations."

The SDLP had done so also, "to its cost", he said, as had the US Government. "And so has everyone in sight, and yet here we are in this situation days before negotiations and they are still playing games with our future, not just in terms of peace but in terms of the whole stability that is possible within this island. We must proceed," he concluded.