THE Belfast Telegraph is serialising the latest Trimble biography by the terribly well-spoken Dean Godson of the Daily Telegraph. This section could be an indicator of things to come. The importance of the Andrew Sens statement to unionists in the midst of last October’s decommissioning fiasco, despite the rejection of de Chastelain’s weary words, indicates where unionist acceptance may eventually be found for future IICD statements.
Here’s the relevant passage from the extract: “The Governments – and Trimble – thought that Andrew Sens’s parting shot at the end of the press conference was much closer to what was needed in the circumstances. ‘What we saw (decommissioned) this morning could have caused death and destruction on a huge scale if it had been used.’ Had this been said at the beginning, and had the rest followed in the same spirit, Trimble believed that everything might have been very different.
“But by then it was too late. The impression of lack of clarity, and of the Provisionals setting the pace of the process, was indelibly etched on the minds of the UUP. . .”
So what would unionist reaction have been if de Chastelain had been allowed by the IRA to begin his statement with a Sens-like indication of how long the weapons decommissioned could have been used to carry out a military campaign for? It’s a long way from the itinerary republicans oppose revealing, but closer to unionist demands for greater clarity.
The irony is, that Trimble admits that he deliberately did not seek clarity from Adams because he didn’t think he would get a “useful answer”. If Trimble was prepared to go along with constructive ambiguity at a time when unionists wanted transparency, and at a time when even Tony Blair was saying he wanted to move away from the “constructive ambiguity” of past negotiations, wasn’t the deal a recipe for failure from the start?
As Godson claims: “Quite simply, Adams and McGuinness out-stared the leaders of two western democracies. And they were able to do so because the two states would do nothing to jeopardise their standing inside the republican movement – even though, as Ed Moloney and others have contended, the IRA cannot return to armed struggle in the post-September 11 world.
“When given a choice of cutting Trimble adrift or cutting the Sinn Fein leadership adrift, the two states still opted for the former.
“It was the easier option, partly because Trimble made it so.”
Lessons to be learned.
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