Suspension is 'second best option' says Trimble

As speculation mounts that direct rule will return on Monday, UUP leader David Trimble emerged from talks with Taoiseach Bertie Ahern today declaring that suspension was "very much a second best option".

Mr Trimble was speaking in Dublin this afternoon after holding crisis talks with the Irish Prime Minister. The talks had evidently not altered the UUP position – as their first option remains the exclusion of Sinn Fein in the wake of allegations surrounding the party's involvement in a suspected 'spy ring' at the NIO.

Following the meeting, Mr Trimble outlined his party's two major objections to suspension.

He said: "Firstly, it [suspension] punishes everybody, the innocent with the guilty and there is something basically wrong with that approach. Because there has been such a level of criminality the obvious thing to do is punish the guilty, not the innocent. So it is wrong as a matter of principle.

"Secondly, all it does is buy you time. It doesn’t sort out the problem and the problem is the continued paramilitary activity and the basic fact still remains that four and a half years into a transition that which should have been done, which the Agreement provided for in two years, has not yet been done. There has been no significant progress made."

There can be little hope for a last-minute breakthrough. Whilst the major pro-agreement players, the UUP, SDLP and Sinn Fein, agree that there should be no suspension of the assembly – the UUP have said that that can only be avoided if Sinn Fein are excluded.

For their part, Sinn Fein have said that the current crisis should refocus efforts to implement the full implementation of the agreement, and yesterday the party handed in a letter of protest to the British embassy in Dublin.

The letter said: "We call upon the British Government not to suspend the institutions established under the Good Friday Agreement but, on the contrary, to proceed with the implementation of that Agreement which has the overwhelming support of the Irish people. That is in the real interests of both the Irish people and the people of Britain."

The broad swathe of political opinion, however, anticipates the power-sharing executive's suspension for the fourth time on Monday.

It had been rumoured that the British Irish Inter-governmental Conference could have an input into administration of the province during suspension of the Assembly. However, Mr Trimble has warned that this was "very dangerous ground indeed" and would be an act of "utter folly".

(GMcG)