U.S. Mediator Sets Deadline for a Deal in N. Ireland Peace Talks
Declaring that the time for tough choices is at hand, the U.S. chairman of Northern Ireland’s peace talks set a two-week deadline Wednesday for feuding leaders to strike a deal.
“We believe, and we have informed the participants, that the time for discussion is over,” said George J. Mitchell, who has overseen the negotiations on Northern Ireland’s political future since June 1996. “It is now time for decision.”
The former U.S. Senate majority leader said that after nearly two years of talks, the negotiators have “considered the issues at length and in detail.”
“The participants know what needs to be done. It’s now time to do it,” he said.
Mitchell sat down individually with each of the eight participating parties Monday and Tuesday to inform them of his intention to pursue the April 9 deadline.
He said that beginning Monday, negotiators will meet all week long and take breaks only to eat and sleep. Hotel rooms have been arranged for negotiators who live outside the area of Belfast, the capital of the British province.
Politicians from both sides of Northern Ireland’s political-religious divide supported Mitchell’s initiative--but blamed one another for making an agreement unlikely.
A negotiator for the main pro-British Protestant party, the Ulster Unionists, said “fundamental differences” remain between his party and both wings of Roman Catholic opinion: the moderate Social Democratic and Labor Party, the north’s main Catholic party, and the Irish Republican Army-allied Sinn Fein party.
Sinn Fein negotiator Bairbre de Brun accused the Ulster Unionists of obstructing progress. “I don’t think they have shown a willingness to do anything other than stall,” she said.
Earlier Wednesday, Northern Ireland’s police chief cleared a potential obstacle to Sinn Fein’s participation in the final stretch of negotiations.
Chief Constable Ronnie Flanagan said he didn’t believe that IRA commanders had sanctioned recent car bomb and mortar attacks in Northern Ireland.
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