Transcript of Press Conference with Tony Blair and Bertie Ahern on the Peace Process, London, (1 February 2005)

Transcript of Press Conference with Tony Blair, then British Prime Minister, and Bertie Ahern, then Taoiseach (Irish Prime Minister), on the Peace Process, 10 Downing Street, London, (1 February 2005)

PRIME MINISTER: (Tony Blair)

Good Afternoon everyone, and can I welcome the Taoiseach again to Downing Street. Obviously we have had an important meeting since we have met the Garda Commissioner and the head of the Police Service of Northern Ireland. They have given us their very clear view that the bank robbery in question was carried out by the Provisional IRA. That is a view we accept, indeed have to. And so I think we are left with a very, very clear situation. The obstacle now to a lasting and durable settlement in Northern Ireland is the continuing paramilitary activity, criminal activity, of the IRA. It has got to stop and it has got to stop in its entirety, there cannot be any compromise with that whatever. If it does, and if it is given up definitively and completely, then the process can move forward on an inclusive basis, and that is the basis we both want to see it move forward. We want everyone to be part of a new dispensation in Northern Ireland, but it has to be understood very, very clearly. For several years people were prepared to see a process of transition take place. That is now over, as far as everybody is concerned, north of the border, south of the border, everybody is of the same view. And I hope very much that the Republican leadership understand that and accept it and realise that it can't be done on any other basis. The one thing that is now clear is that Unionism accepts, as indeed it should, that provided there is a commitment to exclusively democratic and peaceful means, they are obliged to share power with others in Northern Ireland, with the Republicans, with Nationalists, and there can't be any going back on that, but that is now actually accepted and understood. What is impossible for us to do is to have that situation come about, unless that commitment to exclusively peaceful and democratic means is there, and at the moment, as we can see from the bank robbery that has happened, and also the continuing so-called punishment beatings that are actually brutal assaults on people, that continuing is an indication that so far that message is not properly and clearly understood. But there is actually almost a simplicity about the present situation now. Everything else can be resolved, but this has got to be resolved, and until it is it is difficult to make the progress that we want to see.

TAOISEACH: (Bertie Ahern)

Prime Minister, today I think was a very useful meeting, a successful meeting from the Irish Government's point of view. What the Prime Minister said is the fact of the situation. We have been trying for some time to work for a comprehensive agreement and to bring clarity to the issues, and I think all of the work that we have done on the Joint Declaration, from Weston Park, the work of 8 December, is all good work that we have brought fairly close to a conclusion. The reality of the situation is that until we get an end to criminality in the end, to decommissioning, then we cannot win the trust or confidence of the collective parties to be able to move forward. I think we have got the situation to clarity now. It is not as complicated or as difficult I think for people to understand. We are both totally committed to the criminal justice issues, to all of the issues in the Joint Declaration and everything else, we have made our position clear, we have published our documents. For us to now bring it on to the issue of getting winning support, of the trust and confidence of everybody, and ourselves, then we need a clear position on the real and definitive end to criminality in totality on the issue of decommissioning. If we get that, sooner rather than later, we can get on to get to the position we have been trying to do for several years, and I do not think it is any more complex than that.

QUESTION:

Prime Minister, what now fills the gap in the interim until that message is interpreted and accepted?

PRIME MINISTER: (Tony Blair)

Well I think we have got to carry on looking for the ways to make progress on the other issues that are there. It is important we carry on developing civic society and the progress that has been made on human rights, and equality and other things. We are also actually going to discuss the ways, over the coming weeks, that we can move things forward, but obviously it is not as satisfactory as moving things forward on an inclusive basis. But at the moment that is not going to be possible, and I hope that there is a period of really hard and tough reflection, and I hope those people who feel passionately about the Republican cause, which they are perfectly entitled to do, just understand that for those of us involved in democratic politics it is not just the paramilitary activity that is repugnant, it is the criminal activity, it is taking people out who you may think have done bad things in local neighbourhoods, but going and shooting them in cold blood, without any trial, without any form of judicial process, engage in that type of brutality, carrying out bank robberies that as we saw wasn't just a bank robbery in terms of the money taken, but in terms of the family and the people terrorised as a result. Now I don't know about you, but to me that is not what politics is about. And so people can feel passionately about their cause, but I am afraid that all of us in democratic politics also feel passionately about our commitment to democracy and our commitment to political causes being pursued by democratic means, and not by something that you can't dignify frankly by calling it anything other than criminal brutality and thuggery.

QUESTION:

You used the word clarity about the situation, the Prime Minister said there is a certain simplicity about it, you have already said you have recommended the IMC do not take sanctions against Sinn Fein. That being the case, what concrete steps can you and the Prime Minister take to ensure that Sinn Fein do address this criminal issue of criminality, if you are not prepared to let the IMC take sanctions?

TAOISEACH: (Bertie Ahern)

First of all Brian, the IMC are independent, the IMC can publish whatever report they so wish. But I have given my views, because we are working for the full implementation of the Good Friday Agreement and the overall objective of the Prime Minister and I for several years, and will be, is to get the full implementation agreement. So that is based on inclusivity, that everybody plays their part in it, and it is far better for us to engage with the parties, and if it is one party today and another tomorrow where we have something to say, or they have something to say to us, it is far better that we work that on an inclusive basis. Obviously we can't implement the agreement in full now, in spite of all of the progress that we have made, which is still there, I think that is still in place, but we cannot do that because we can't get the trust and confidence because of recent events, and we have no need to go back over them again, and we can't get that trust and confidence so we can't move it forward. So the answer to the last part of your question is we asked, both of us have asked, the Sinn Fein leadership to engage in how we can move forward and what is their response to the issue of criminality and decommissioning. The questions are very clear, they are very simple. If they are prepared to engage and are prepared to move forward and bring these to a finality then we can get on, we might not be able to do it tomorrow or next month, but we can get on over the course of this year with it, but we need that response back from them, and as the Prime Minister's appeal for those in the Republican movement, and I add my name to that, to look at the dilemma we are in, and we can't bring it on to the end until we can build up everybody in the spirit of the Good Friday Agreement. But the project is the implementation of the Good Friday Agreement, that is what the people have voted for north and south, there can be no deviation from that and then everybody should sign that.

QUESTION:

Did you discuss the Guiseppe Conlon issue?

TAOISEACH: (Bertie Ahern)

Yes I did, I have raised it with the Prime Minister.

QUESTION:

What was the outcome?

PRIME MINISTER: (Tony Blair)

The Taoiseach has raised the issue of the Conlan family with me. I have no doubt that Mark Durkan, who I will be seeing shortly, will do the same. I am not going to say anything about it today, but I will be saying something about it shortly.

QUESTION:

To both Prime Ministers, you have seen Gerry Adams and you have put the kind of message that you are repeating here to us directly to Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness. Do you think the reason that you have not got the kind of answers you are looking for so far is internal division within the Republican movement about what the way forward should be?

PRIME MINISTER: (Tony Blair):

I can't be sure what the reasons are, and I should imagine there will be internal divisions, but what I know is this, that the difficulty that we have, you know we all have been long enough engaged in this to be frank about it, is that anything that moves the process forward that doesn't include Sinn Fein is obviously fraught with difficulty. We all know that, they know that. And the very reason why therefore we have had to do difficult compromises, creative ambiguities, you know things that have been messy and often that people have found some difficulty with, including ourselves, has been the fact that we are trying to do everything we possibly can to get forward on that inclusive basis. The problem is we have reached the point, and really have been at this point now for the last couple of years, where there is no way forward by way of compromise, ambiguity, fudge, on this issue any more, there is only one way forward, that is everyone gets into the democratic bus and goes forward on that track, or not. And so I can understand that there will be divisions for all sorts of different reasons, but they have to understand that there is now no division anywhere else, there is a united position. You cannot both be part of a democratic process, share power in government, and engage in criminality or paramilitary activity. Now in the end people have got to decide, they have got to decide whether what matters to them is the political cause, or what matters to them is the other stuff. But the other stuff is now the obstacle to the political cause being progressed. The fact is that is the barrier to progress now, and whatever people, and again I think it is worth just being frank about this for a moment, I think for a period of time, before the cease-fires and when things were obviously very, very difficult at the height of the troubles in Northern Ireland, there will have been a feeling I think in some Republican circles that it is only because we have got what then was called the armed struggle going alongside the political strategy that they were getting anywhere. Maybe that is what they thought, maybe there are people in Republicanism who still think that. Whether they were right or wrong 10 - 15 years ago, they are wrong now, that is the obstacle, and the two things are now in fundamental contradiction with each other. Now I hope the Sinn Fein leadership understand that, I hope that they do, but that is the position and I think really for both of us it is a strange thing that after all the times when we have listed all sorts of issues and all sorts of problems, what we have both come to today is really, what stares at us is the simplicity, not the complexity. It is a simple deal now.

QUESTION:

Can you tell us if proceedings are in train against the suspects, as from being informed by the police here?

PRIME MINISTER: (Tony Blair)

I think I had better refer you to the police on that one Aidan, but ask another question if you want.

QUESTION:

No, no. But obviously if you want to copper bottom the ambition which you illustrate for us today, presumably some action will have to be taken against those who are perpetrating these obscenities, as you might describe them?

PRIME MINISTER: (Tony Blair)

Sure. Obviously the police are carrying on their work, and as I say they will have to answer questions about who may or may not be prosecuted. But I thought in what if I may say so was a bravura performance by the Taoiseach in the Dail the other day, I think that he was pointing out the fact that the so-called punishment beatings, which as I say are really serious assaults on people. Those stop and start - that doesn't argue for me that you don't have a disciplined organisation. And the fact is they have got to stop completely, not simply stop when it is convenient, and start when it is convenient.

QUESTION:

But on the robbery, Prime Minister, which is the big sticking point, were either of the senior police officers here today able to tell you when there might be an arrest, because it is one thing to say the IRA did it, but until there has been an arrest it doesn't hold as much water as it might otherwise.

TAOISEACH: (Bertie Ahern):

Surely that is a matter for them, it is a policing matter.

QUESTION:

But were they able to tell you if they were any closer to an arrest?

TAOISEACH: (Bertie Ahern)

Even our Commissioner would never, and this is the same with the Commissioner in Northern Ireland, these are policing matters and they are not going to advertise arrests.

PRIME MINISTER: (Tony Blair)

They will pursue their enquiries and they will say, when they have decided to do something they will do it, and we have got to refer you to them for that. But I think on the basis of what the Chief of Police said from Northern Ireland, and from the Republic, I don't think there is any doubt about the provenance of this.