Durkan Briefs US Business Leaders

SDLP Mark Durkan address to US business people and community leaders on the peace process at the Sky Club in New York, July 22, 2003:
 

It is now time to consolidate a pro-agreement axis right across the different parties that claim to be pro-agreement. The SDLP have never diverged from our stance that all of the agreement needs to be implemented. We have said time and again that the key is 'implementation, implementation, implementation.'

Clearly the proof that this is the way forward can be seen in terms of policing. Once we were satisfied that we had the necessary commitments on policing legislation the SDLP drove the policing agenda forward and ensured its implementation on the Policing Board.

By sticking to Patten as the roadmap for the new beginning to policing, we have not just succeeded in delivering Patten's proposals against the expectations of some and the antipathy of others, we have arrived at Patten plus on key areas including recruitment and the dismantling of Special Branch.
 
In the same way that the SDLP insisted to sticking to Patten as the road map for the new beginning to policing we have insisted that everyone stick to the agreement as the roadmap for the new political order. 

We haven't opted out or coped out of any of the Agreement's requirements. We haven't held up others or held back on commitments under the Agreement. The Agreement is the real way to build trust and overcome doubts and differences that have been created by the a la carte, stop-go, yes-no stances since the Agreement.

All parties need to hold to the promises of the Agreement and need to be held to the common standards of the Agreement. 

The Agreement can not be seen as an optional luxury merely secondary to the peace process. While in earlier years, the peace process and the political process may have been talked of in separate strands, they converged with the Agreement. This should have been confirmed in the spirit and manner of the implementation of the Agreement. 

The dangerous result of too many parties taking an a la carte approach to different aspects of the Agreement has been to arrive at a situation where political institutions have been made a suspendable option and the democratic elections have been treated by the British government as a postponeable extra.

The two governments need to allow and require a more collective endeavor in the Agreement's cause. The sooner everyone can see the process is the Agreement and the Agreement is the process the surer everyone's confidence will be and the steadier progress will be.

Durkan Wants Agreement on Direction

In a speech Sept. 15, SDLP leader Mark Durkan called for an end to the politics of 'blame and counter blame' and has demanded that the two governments immediately convene all-party talks to "agree the path forward." On Sept. 16, the SDLP met with Sinn Fein President Gerry Adams in Belfast and with Foreign Affairs Minister Brian Cowen in Dublin. Speaking in advance of these meetings, Mr Durkan said:

"For far too long, those of us who have put no obstacles in the way of progress have had to suffer the juvenile politics of dare and double dare, blame and counter blame. Sinn Fein is now saying that a move from the republican movement is possible, provided an election date is set. People have the right to ask, why was there no such move from the republican movement earlier this year, when we had a date for a May election? Why does the republican movement keep giving anti-Agreement unionists excuse after excuse to hold the process back?

"While it is understandable that we are fed up, we are not about to give up. We all know the forward steps that need to be taken. We know we need a date for an autumn election. We need the guarantee that the institutions, once restored, will not be collapsed again. We need an end of all paramilitary activity and we need further demilitarisation. To ensure all this happens, we need to sit around a table together and agree common understandings and undertakings that will deliver the Joint Declaration and the Good Friday Agreement.

"The growing cost of failure to make progress is obvious. There is an ongoing campaign of fear and harassment against nationalist members of District Policing Partnerships, with continuing uncertainty about who is responsible. Catholic families in Newtownabbey cannot even grieve their loved ones in privacy and peace. There is deep alarm that a power struggle within one party registers more significance with Tony Blair than the democratic rights of the public at large.

"I am repeating my call for both governments and all parties to immediately sit down together and agree the path forward. That was how we reached the Agreement in the first place and it is the only way we are going to achieve meaningful progress now. Against the backdrop of all the uncertainty that exists, all pro-Agreement parties must determine that we are going to once and for all going to move the political process towards the Agreement's full implementation.