Amnesty urges Northern Ireland parties to publish ideas despite failed talks

Organisation says parties should at least make public their proposals for investigating unsolved Troubles crimes and abuses

 

Sinn Fein president Gerry Adams speaks to the media in Belfast after party talks chaired by Dr Richard Haass failed to secure a deal. Photograph: Paul Faith/PA

 Amnesty urges Northern Ireland parties to publish ideas despite failed talks
Sinn Fein president Gerry Adams speaks to the media in Belfast after party talks chaired by Dr Richard Haass failed to secure a deal. Photograph: Paul Faith/PA

Amnesty International on Monday night challenged Northern Ireland's five main parties to publish draft proposals that would have created a mechanism to investigate all unsolved crimes and human rights abuses during the Troubles.

As the inquest began into how the talks chaired by ex-US diplomats Dr Richard Haass and Meghan O'Sullivan failed to reach a deal, the global human rights organisation said the parties should at least make public their ideas for dealing with three and a half decades of armed conflict.

The main unionist and nationalist parties along with the centrist Alliance party worked through Monday night and the early hours of Tuesday morning to try and hammer out a settlement that would deal with the outstanding controversies overhanging the peace process.

Haass and O'Sullivan were asked back in July by Peter Robinson and Martin McGuinness – Northern Ireland's first and deputy first ministers – to chair talks aimed at solving the issues of flying flags, controversial parades and the violent past.

The Americans crossed the Atlantic twice between Christmas Eve and New Year's Eve in order to chair the talks in two Belfast hotels. But they fly back to the United States empty-handed, the discussions having failed to reach a successful conclusion.

While the unionists baulked at a deal because of concerns over new restrictions on parading and the failure to resolve the flags dispute, the parties did make some progress on dealing with the past, including a proposed investigative body that would probe all unsolved Troubles crimes and human rights violations. Around 3,500 people were killed in the conflict, with 3,000 of those murders still unsolved.

Patrick Corrigan, Amnesty International's director in Northern Ireland, said: "What progress has been achieved by the parties, and the Haass team, towards agreeing a new approach to the past must not be squandered or obscured by disagreement on other issues.

"The parties should now publish the draft proposals on dealing with the past, clarify where areas of disagreement still exist and give victims and the wider public a chance to respond. Then the politicians should get back round a talks table and not get up again until they have reached agreement."

In September, Amnesty published an 82-page report – Northern Ireland: Time to deal with the past – claiming that the previous patchwork system of investigations into past Troubles crimes has proven inadequate for the task of establishing the full truth about human rights violations and abuses committed by all sides during the three decades of political violence.

Amid the acrimony over the talks breaking up without a deal, Northern Ireland's justice minister, David Ford, accused the Democratic Unionists and the Ulster Unionists of pandering to loyalist extremists over the issue of flags and parades. He said they appeared more concerned with extremists standing against them in local and European elections this year.

Ford claimed the unionist parties objected to the creation of a new code of conduct for those taking part in traditional marches, the majority of which are organised by the Orange Order and other loyalist institutions.

In a hard-hitting assessment of the unionists' attitude to the parades and flag issues, Ford, who is also the leader of the Alliance party, said: "On parades, new structures have been proposed. But the real issue with parades was never about structures – the problem was behaviour. The desperate attempts by the unionist parties to resist an effective code of conduct for marchers and protesters showed that very clearly. So while we have a new approach to structures, it remains to be seen whether there will be any change in behaviour.

"If the attitude to flags is anything to go by, we don't hold out much hope, because the biggest disappointment of this process has been the refusal to face up to the issue of flags."

Sinn Féin president Gerry Adams said his negotiating team believed that there had been grounding for a deal based on the proposals put forward. While Sinn Féin did not regard the proposed deal as "perfect", Adams added that there would be a lot of disappointment among ordinary people who would feel that compromise had not been reached.

The British and Irish governments sought yesterday to put some positive gloss on the Haass talks. David Cameron urged the parties to keep going given some progress had been made in the discussions.

Anticipating further talks on the unresolved issues, the Irish deputy prime minister, Eamon Gilmore, said: "This is not a step back but rather a step yet taken."

•   Henry McDonald, Ireland correspondent
•   The Guardian

Immigration and asylum Vince Cable should resign over immigration remarks, says Tory MP

ince Cable said the Tories were creating a panic in Britain about the scale of migration from the European Union. Photograph: David Cheskin/PA

A Tory MP major the resistance to raising manages on Romania and Location has known as for Vince Wire to phase down from the cupboard after the company assistant cautioned that Traditional over stated claims on migrants was similar to Enoch Powell's "rivers of blood" conversation.

Nigel Generators said: "It would be very hard for him to sit around the cupboard desk having successfully in comparison his Traditional co-workers to Enoch Powell, which is an definitely absurd thing to have done. Mr Cable's always had a rather innovative presentation of what combined liability ought to look like but these feedback, arriving on the returning of some would say definitely sensible plan reports by the pm to limit well being for individuals recently came here [who] can't declare until they've compensated in – it just looks definitely out of contact with the emotions of most of the English individuals.

"What he said last night was extremely over the top and ill-judged feedback. We've tried to perform this discussion in a sensible way especially at some factor when the economy's still fairly poor and for him to use such intemperate terminology really is undesirable."

The level of the nasty individual toxins leaking into some of the coalition's key plan conflicts was exposed on Weekend when Wire charged the Conservatives of grubbing for Ukip ballots with reckless and populist over stated claims.

He said the Tories were developing a stress in England about the range of migration from the Western Partnership, saying it was the responsibility of governmental management to offer confidence during times of nationwide stress.

He also exposed he was involved for the nation's community material because of the range of community investing reduces and for initially cautioned there may have to be a rise in attention levels to convenience a "raging real estate boom" in the south-east.

He said if no activity were taken, there was a threat that in areas of London, uk real estate would be too costly for anyone but "foreigners and bankers".

Cable's feedback will irritate Tory backbenchers, who declare they are merely voicing the worries of their elements over the likely range of migration when adjusting manages on Romanians and Bulgarians are raised on 1 Jan.

Cable also recurring Chip Clegg's dismissive denial of Tory programs to place a cap on the number of EU migrants permitted into England, saying it was "illegal and had no possibility of being implemented".

But it was Cable's marketing of Cameron as reckless in his pandering for Ukip ballots and likening the over stated claims to Enoch Powell's "rivers of blood" conversation in 1968 that will cause most rubbing as the coalition looks for to stay a performing govt before the 2015 common selection. Powell was sacked as darkness defense assistant after the conversation, which was commonly considered as improper.

Speaking on the BBC's Phil Marr Display, Wire said: "I think there's a problem here. We regularly get these migrants panics, I keep in mind going returning to Enoch Powell and 'rivers of blood' and all that, and if you go returning a millennium there were panics over Judaism immigration.

"The liability of governmental figures in this scenario when individuals are getting nervous is to try to assure them and give them information and not stress and hotel to populist actions that do harm."

He added: "What's occurring here is the Conservatives are in a bit of stress because of Ukip, responding the way they are. It's not going to help them politically but it's doing significant amounts of harm.

"The easy factor is there is very little proof of advantage travel and leisure from individuals arriving from southern European countries. All the proof indicates they put far more into the economic program with regards to tax than they take out in advantages. It was right to quit misuse of the advantages program … but independence of activity, simultaneously restricted as it is under the Western contracts, is an definitely process and a lot of English individuals take benefits of it."

He also set into "ridiculous rules" designed by the Home Workplace that avoided Native indian and China entrepreneurs from going to England.

He included that he terrifying for the UK's community material, saying "pressure on community investing is getting very serious – actually, some very good solutions are now being seriously affected".

Downing Road was unapologetic about its migrants plan, saying: "Vince is a participant of the govt and facilitates govt plan. The conditions he selects to do that are up to him."

But Wire again indicated questions about macroeconomic plan, saying the discrepancy of the restoration was assisting to energy "a flaming real estate growth in London, uk and the south-east". He outlined that a couple weeks ago Moritz Kraemer, go specialist at ranking organization Conventional & Poor's, had said that the improve in the UK real estate industry intended concerns about durability stayed.

Cable has continuously known as for the Help to Buy plan presented by the chancellor to be stopped, but Traditional real estate reverend Kris Hopkins refused Cable's research, saying 3.4m residence dealings were predicted during the lifestyle of Help to Buy and less than 2% of those would be through the plan.

"This is not fuelling a real estate growth. This is assisting some 18,000 individuals get their feet on the real estate steps," he said.

Meanwhile the Bulgarian chief executive has cautioned Bob Cameron he threats being assessed by record as a pm who has separated the UK and broken its popularity. Rosen Plevneliev said Bulgarians were viewing The british migrants discussion open up and increasing concerns about the "democratic, resistant and gentle English society".

the guardian