For weeks Sinn Féin has been preparing the line that the DUP were out to
humiliate the IRA. Yet it only seems to be the republican movement, which
classes transparency as humiliation.
Alex Attwood of the SDLP doesn't see it as humiliation and the Irish Prime
Minister said on Wednesday that photographs are nothing to do with
humiliation or surrender and everything to do with certainty and clarity.
The clear consensus amongst the rest of the parties and the Governments is
that photographs of decommissioning would be an acceptable and positive
step. Had the circumstances been there for my party to form an Executive it
would have been done in public.
In the past the dismantling of watchtowers was done in full glare of the
cameras. The actions required of everyone else would be public and
transparent but the IRA wishes its commitments to be carried out in
secretive fashion, which only undermines public confidence.
After all, there are countless examples when the IRA has not been shy about
having its weapons filmed. Photographs have been fine when they are of
weapons being brandished by balaclava wearing gunmen for republican
calendars, just as videos have been fine for republican propaganda films.
Similarly the cameras were there to survey the aftermath of the IRA's
atrocities. In short, photographs have never been a problem when it was
about glorifying republican terrorism. However, the same flexibility is not
there when it is about establishing peace. For us that is really what the
issue of photographs is about.
Photographs would provide the evidence which will maximise the public
support and confidence for any deal and therefore increase it chances of
providing a real and lasting settlement - not another stage in a process
which has juddered from one halt to another since 1998.
Last Wednesday (Dec 7) when the whole issue of photos was centre stage to the world
I brought myself back to Leeds Castle where the initial discussions had
taken place and thought back to whether the visibility of decommissioning
had been raised there.
Off course it had because the last couple of decommissioning "events" were
hardly "events" for the wider community; instead of instilling confidence
into the process it became a farce. The tautologies surrounding what
"significant" actually meant were as big a "turn off" for politicos as they
were for Joe Bloggs.
Add to this the fact that republicans are telling their own people that
there had been no actual decommissioning in the past, but only smoke and
mirrors and it becomes absolutely imperative for the survival of any real
and meaningful settlement that something was needed on visibility.
Seeing is believing may be a cliché however it reverberates around the
community in Northern Ireland. We are a sceptical lot at the best of time
but given the history of the decommissioning process since 1998 it's hardly
surprising.
It is not difficult for me to recall one of the reasons why I voted against
the Belfast Agreement - because the issue of decommissioning of illegal arms
held by paramilitaries was so very vague. For those of you who have
forgotten decommissioning was to be completed by May of 2000.
Yet here we are at the end of 2004 trying to bring closure to that issue
once and for all. Its all very well for Sinn Féin to say that they would
sign up to the "political parts" of the new agreement but if the experience
of the Agreement has taught us anything it is that Sinn Féin hides behind
the charade that they do not speak for the IRA. This is in all or nothing
package.
We should not lose sight of how far we have come. For years we were told
that the DUP had no alternative. Before the 2003 Assembly election, victory
for the DUP was painted as if it would mean the very world coming to an end.
However, all those myths have been removed.
My party has worked hard to make this work, harder than many were prepared
to imagine. We are still prepared to take this forward but Sinn Féin/IRA
have to move towards the ground which everyone else is on.
Photographic evidence is contained within the Government's proposals and it
is therefore only Sinn Féin/IRA who have rejected that way forward.
Wednesday could have been a great day for Northern Ireland. We are greatly
disappointed that it wasn't. P O'Neill its over to you.
Arlene Foster is a DUP Member of the Legislative Assembly for Fermanagh & South Tyrone.
