PRESIDENT MARY McAleese has urged those outside the peace process to “go down the road of peace”.
She was speaking during a visit to the strongly loyalist Newtownards Road area of east Belfast, the scene of the city’s worst street disturbances in a decade, and the nearby nationalist enclave of Short Strand.
The Belfast visit was organised in advance of the riots which erupted along the sectarian interface last week. Police said the two nights of serious violence, in which three people were shot and injured, was orchestrated by the UVF.
However, the President’s itinerary was altered to include a visit to the Short Strand community centre before Mrs McAleese went on to the nearby East Belfast Mission.
There, she commended the work being done at street level to build peace and defuse tensions between communities on either side of the peace lines.
“There are people who haven’t joined the peace,” she told a large and enthusiastic reception at the mission’s premises, where she was greeted by the Rev Gary Mason and UDA figure Jackie McDonald.
“There are people who don’t believe in it and don’t want to believe in it. There are people who have set their face against it. There is a question inside them, ‘what if I did go down that road?’” It is worthwhile encouraging those people with such doubts, she said, to build their lives into the new world. “We are trying to take old attitudes, old experiences, old hurts and old wounds and to knit them now into something that is useable . . . for the future. That is what we are trying to do, but with nobody left out.”
It was tempting to turn one’s back on those who don’t want to join the process, the President said.
“We have to love them. They are part of our community, part of our lives, they are our neighbours. We are always going to be neighbours . . . now is the opportunity to be patient – patient in the kind of way that does not give up,” she added.
It was her wish to give her encouragement to anyone in peace building, at any level, in the local community. “The prize is so worthwhile; the prize is being able to walk in any part of the city or this island being who you are and what you are. Feeling safe and secure and wanted, that is what we want for each and every one of us.”
Difference did not mean exclusion, she said.
The President, accompanied by her husband, Senator Martin McAleese, was escorted throughout her visit by Sinn Féin Lord Mayor of Belfast Niall Ó Donghaille, whose council ward includes Short Strand.
Welcoming them, Mr Ó Donghaille said he was confident their visit would focus on the “positivity and goodwill in the local community” and would help people on all sides “to move on from what we’ve seen last week – the worst we’ve seen in quite some time”.