Stephen Walker from the BBC has managed to obtain details of Richard Haass’ third draft to the five main parties.
The latest draft comes to the conlusion that most of us could have said months ago that : “We could not reach a common position on the flying of flags.”
Haass does reccomend a policy of councils flying flags on designated days-something that Unionists are unlikely to adopt.
He also proposes the creation of a new working group that would report to OFMDFM on culture and tradition.
On dealing with the past he still has a Historical Investigations Unit and another looking at information recovery included in his latest draft.
I can’t help but think that Haass is simply proposing more quangos and processes to deal with a situation that needs to build community confidence and have the will to enforce difficult decisions. The only thing these proposals create are merely more targets on the dart board for our politicians to take aim at.
Perhaps it is just a sign of how toxic our politics have become that even after three months of hard work we cannot resolve these issues.
Latest from Haass
#NorthernIreland latest: have read late nite/early am submissions from all 5 parties; trying to bridge gaps as we near deadline
— Richard N. Haass (@RichardHaass) December 23, 2013
David McCann holds a PhD in North-South relations from University of Ulster. You can follow him on twitter @dmcbfs
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