The Northern Secretary, Dr Mo Mowlam, has "violated democracy and morality" by suggesting there was a possibility of letting the UDP back into the Stormont talks within three weeks, Mr Bob McCartney said last night.
Mr McCartney, leader of the UK Unionist Party, said suspending the UDP from the talks for such a short period after "the murder of three innocent Catholics in 10 days" was "the equivalent of sending an ice hockey player to the sin bin for three minutes" for committing an act of violence on the field of play.
He was speaking at a meeting of the Historical Society in Trinity College, Dublin, last night.
Mr McCartney said visiting people like the loyalist prisoners Johnny Adair and Michael Stone in the Maze, and describing them as "heroes of the peace process", was another example of the "corruption" which had "come about as a result of taking risks for peace". Responding to Mr McCartney's speech, the leader of the Alliance Party, Lord Alderdice said a new set of relationships was becoming possible on these islands.
Reaching a settlement was "not a question of remaking history" as "the only thing you can change is the future".
He said "all the relationships on this archipelago have to be addressed" in different ways and it would be "a disaster" to insist on those relations falling into logical patterns as human beings were emotional as well as rational.
Earlier, Mr McCartney said the only confidence-building measures that seemed to matter to the British government were those designed to build the confidence "of terrorists and thugs of all kinds". Ordinary people were sick of seeing principle abandoned and the law flouted.
In his view, the peace process entailed trying to persuade one group of terrorists' representatives that a united Ireland was inevitable, while also trying to convince the "fringe Loyalist parties" that the union was safe. He predicted that any attempt by the British government to impose such a solution would result in a violence "of a kind not yet seen".
Mr McCartney said the aim of the British government was to shift the axis of Anglo-Irish relations from London-Dublin to DublinBelfast. This would involve creating an "expanding and dynamic" Anglo-Irish body "with the widest possible remit". There would also be a "paralysed and ineffective" assembly incapable of expressing the wishes of the democratic majority.
Lord Alderdice said he believed the refusal of the British administration to give the Irish "an opportunity to participate in their own government" had resulted in the break-up of the United Kingdom in the first place. He said it was "a tragedy to insist that power be kept in the centre".
"The people of Northern Ireland need a common focus for their attention and a way of influencing their own affairs. Sometimes it's more comfortable to put the blame on others than to take responsibility for our own affairs".
Responding to Mr McCartney's criticism of the Stormont talks, the leader of the Labour Party, Mr Ruairi Quinn, acknowledged that there were "contradictory pressures". Trying to balance the conflicting visions of the future of the island was "a Kafkaesque nightmare but is it a worse nightmare than ethnic cleansing?"
