Maskey believes Agreement 'can grow in strength'

Sinn Fein have restated their commitment to the peace process at a meeting in Monaghan, with the party's Lord Mayor of Belfast Alex Maskey stating his belief that the agreement can once again move out of crisis.

Mr Maskey used the party's annual Ferghal O'Hanlon lecture in Monaghan to sound a positive note ahead of this week's round of talks in Downing Street designed to get devolution back on track.

The Good Friday Agreement, said Mr Maskey, was a "binding international treaty" which "offers everyone equality and opportunity to begin again".

He added: "I am satisfied with the proper will on all sides it can not only withstand the pressures of this year it can grow in strength and prove for the first time in centuries that the people of this island and Britain can work out their difficulties peacefully and politically."

However, the British government were held up by the party as the major catalyst for the political impasse.

"The primary responsibility for this failure lies with the British government and they have admitted this failure. Anti-agreement elements inside the British government and the unionist parties are setting the agenda. They have filtered the proposed changes through a unionist view of the world.

However, Sinn Fein also believed that the Irish government were culpable for the problems in the peace process. Mr Maskey went further, suggesting that the Irish government had not always defended the interests of northern Catholics.

"They [the Irish government] have a joint co-equal responsibility for its implementation," said Mr Maskey.

"They also have an onerous responsibility to promote and defend Irish national interests and the rights of all Irish citizens living in the six counties.

"It is my view that there have been a number of occasions in the last few years when they should have been more vocal and assertive in ensuring the British government honoured their commitments."

He went on to call for a new police service which nationalists and republicans could support, legislation securing human rights and justice, and parity of esteem for cultural rights and identity.

However, Mr Maskey said that recent interface violence was creating a second partition of the north as nationalists, he said, were driven from their homes.

"This is a form of hidden repartition. It is the blind eye approach by the British military authorities, which leaves Catholics and nationalists vulnerable and uncertain about where to live in their own country," he said.

The Ferghal O'Hanlon lecture commemorates an IRA gunman who was killed following a raid on Brookeborough police station in 1956 during a period known as the 'Border Campaign'.

(GMcG)