The detailed implementation of the Patten report on policing in Northern Ireland is a requirement of the Belfast Agreement, the Minister for Foreign Affairs, Mr Cowen, insisted yesterday.
In an interview on the fringes of the EU foreign ministers' meeting here, Mr Cowen responded to repeated questions about the possibility of concessions to unionists on RUC cap badges by reiterating his conviction that the British government would stand by its commitment to implement Patten in full.
Mr Cowen insisted that the question for both communities was whether they wanted an effective and representative police force "where a policeman can go down any street or road in Northern Ireland and be welcomed". The detailed implementation of the Patten report provided for a fully effective police force to be established. "I'm confident the British government will implement the Patten proposals as they have stated they would."
The suggestion that Patten was not the blueprint was a fallacy, he said. "Patten is the blueprint. If you read the annexe to the agreement, it's there. The sovereign government of Northern Ireland is committed to implement its mandate with utter impartiality, mutual respect, giving equal legitimacy to both traditions, to avoid divisiveness."
On the IRA statement, Mr Cowen said it was a historic turning point in republican thinking, expressing their conviction that their aims could be achieved by peaceful means. "If we want an inclusive process then this is the way forward, to show paramilitarism that politics works," he said.
Mr Cowen acknowledged the absence of a specific commitment from the IRA to a timeframe or deadline for decommissioning.
But he insisted that the assurances being given, in the context of the full implementation of the Belfast Agreement and the verifiability of the IRA's confidence-building measures, went far beyond the original agreement in terms of reassurances to the unionist community. "It is not for politicians to micro-manage or second guess a disarmament commission which is independently established under Gen de Chastelain.'
As for assurances, he said: "You can be assured that, on the basis of full implementation of the Good Friday agreement, arms will be completely and verifiably put beyond use by the paramilitary organisation called the IRA."
He described the leaked memo on his meeting with the Northern Secretary, Mr Peter Mandelson, as "saying more about the state of knowledge of the scribe in respect of Irish Government policy than it does about the accuracy of any discussions that took place". He insisted that he had a "good, cordial and effective working relationship" with the Northern Secretary,
Of the challenge facing the leader of the unionist party, Mr David Trimble, Mr Cowen said he believed there was "a quality in the political leadership of Ulster Unionism, a genuineness to say and to show that unionism is an accommodating tradition in Ireland". The unionists "must be given time and space" to consider the situation, he said.
In reaching the new agreement, Mr Cowen said, it was important "that no pro-agreement party was interested in renegotiating the Good Friday agreement. I think there was a recognition that the institutional balance was there."
