Amnesty urges Northern Ireland parties to publish ideas despite failed talks
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| Sinn Fein president Gerry Adams speaks to the media in Belfast after party talks chaired by Dr Richard Haass failed to secure a deal. Photograph: Paul Faith/PA |
Sinn Fein president Gerry Adams speaks to the media in Belfast after party talks chaired by Dr Richard Haass failed to secure a deal. Photograph: Paul Faith/PA
Amnesty International on Monday night challenged Northern Ireland's five main parties to publish draft proposals that would have created a mechanism to investigate all unsolved crimes and human rights abuses during the Troubles.
As the inquest began into how the talks chaired by ex-US diplomats Dr Richard Haass and Meghan O'Sullivan failed to reach a deal, the global human rights organisation said the parties should at least make public their ideas for dealing with three and a half decades of armed conflict.
The main unionist and nationalist parties along with the centrist Alliance party worked through Monday night and the early hours of Tuesday morning to try and hammer out a settlement that would deal with the outstanding controversies overhanging the peace process.
Haass and O'Sullivan were asked back in July by Peter Robinson and Martin McGuinness – Northern Ireland's first and deputy first ministers – to chair talks aimed at solving the issues of flying flags, controversial parades and the violent past.
The Americans crossed the Atlantic twice between Christmas Eve and New Year's Eve in order to chair the talks in two Belfast hotels. But they fly back to the United States empty-handed, the discussions having failed to reach a successful conclusion.
While the unionists baulked at a deal because of concerns over new restrictions on parading and the failure to resolve the flags dispute, the parties did make some progress on dealing with the past, including a proposed investigative body that would probe all unsolved Troubles crimes and human rights violations. Around 3,500 people were killed in the conflict, with 3,000 of those murders still unsolved.
Patrick Corrigan, Amnesty International's director in Northern Ireland, said: "What progress has been achieved by the parties, and the Haass team, towards agreeing a new approach to the past must not be squandered or obscured by disagreement on other issues.
"The parties should now publish the draft proposals on dealing with the past, clarify where areas of disagreement still exist and give victims and the wider public a chance to respond. Then the politicians should get back round a talks table and not get up again until they have reached agreement."
In September, Amnesty published an 82-page report – Northern Ireland: Time to deal with the past – claiming that the previous patchwork system of investigations into past Troubles crimes has proven inadequate for the task of establishing the full truth about human rights violations and abuses committed by all sides during the three decades of political violence.
Amid the acrimony over the talks breaking up without a deal, Northern Ireland's justice minister, David Ford, accused the Democratic Unionists and the Ulster Unionists of pandering to loyalist extremists over the issue of flags and parades. He said they appeared more concerned with extremists standing against them in local and European elections this year.
Ford claimed the unionist parties objected to the creation of a new code of conduct for those taking part in traditional marches, the majority of which are organised by the Orange Order and other loyalist institutions.
In a hard-hitting assessment of the unionists' attitude to the parades and flag issues, Ford, who is also the leader of the Alliance party, said: "On parades, new structures have been proposed. But the real issue with parades was never about structures – the problem was behaviour. The desperate attempts by the unionist parties to resist an effective code of conduct for marchers and protesters showed that very clearly. So while we have a new approach to structures, it remains to be seen whether there will be any change in behaviour.
"If the attitude to flags is anything to go by, we don't hold out much hope, because the biggest disappointment of this process has been the refusal to face up to the issue of flags."
Sinn Féin president Gerry Adams said his negotiating team believed that there had been grounding for a deal based on the proposals put forward. While Sinn Féin did not regard the proposed deal as "perfect", Adams added that there would be a lot of disappointment among ordinary people who would feel that compromise had not been reached.
The British and Irish governments sought yesterday to put some positive gloss on the Haass talks. David Cameron urged the parties to keep going given some progress had been made in the discussions.
Anticipating further talks on the unresolved issues, the Irish deputy prime minister, Eamon Gilmore, said: "This is not a step back but rather a step yet taken."
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