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Mr. Maginnis: The hon. Gentleman draws attention to what is happening in the talks process and bemoans the fact that we have not made the progress that many of us would have liked. He has indicated that the stumbling block is decommissioning, the disarming of terrorists and the verification of that process, but he appears to point the finger in the direction of Unionists and perhaps of the United Kingdom Government when he makes that allegation. I cannot go into details, because we are bound by confidentiality, but is it not true that two simple issues--one which could have been resolved by the Irish Government and one which could have been resolved by his party, and which would have been in the spirit of what is intended by the legislation--if accepted, would have allowed Unionists to move forward on the understanding that there was practical, and I emphasise the word "practical," sincerity in the approach to decommissioning?

Mr. Mallon: Like the hon. Gentleman, I do not wish to break any confidentiality which exists, so I refer him to his party's public statements on the matter. The Ulster Unionist party has gone on record saying, first, that there must be the decommissioning of a tranche of weapons before any paramilitary grouping--by which it means Sinn Fein--could enter talks. That is a matter of record, and not a matter of supposition or interpretation. Secondly, the UUP--in commenting on the committee that is to liaise with the international verification committee--stated that staged factors in relation to decommissioning would have to be to determined prior to any movement into the substantive negotiations. That is the public position of the UUP.

5.30 pm

I will put a question to the hon. Member for Fermanagh and South Tyrone which I have no doubt that he will answer in his future contributions: does he even remotely imagine that decommissioning as defined by the Secretary of State--a definition with which I agree--will be possible in spite of the two substantial road blocks laid down by his party in the way of substantial and serious negotiations?

Mr. Maginnis: I promise that this will be my last intervention, Madame Deputy Speaker. I must state clearly that when we abandoned what was called Washington 3--we abandoned it on the basis of Mitchell, the very basis on which the hon. Member for Newry and Armagh (Mr. Mallon) argues his case--we accepted that decommissioning had to begin from the very start of the process. In addition, we accepted that we could not move through the political process--no one knows how far through--without seeing the colour of IRA-Sinn Fein's money. We do not apply that rule or tenet solely to Sinn Fein-IRA, but we apply it to every paramilitary

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organisation. Those organisations cannot move beyond the introductory stage of talks--according to Mitchell himself, who stated that the process must be parallel--and into the substantive element without an indication of what will happen. We stick by that position, and we shall continue to do so.

Mr. Mallon: I am delighted to hear that the hon. Gentleman's party is to stick by some positions on this issue. The Ulster Unionist party did not abandon Washington 3--the British Government abandoned it. The Ulster Unionist party reintroduced it when it presented its position on decommissioning publicly during a previous stage of the talks. The hon. Gentleman invokes the Mitchell report, which clearly states that decommissioning would take place not before or after negotiations, but during them.

The position laid down by the Ulster Unionist party is that decommissioning must take place before negotiations. The position of Sinn Fein-IRA, as I understand it, is that decommissioning will come at the end. Can we not at least agree that the only way in which decommissioning should be used as a precondition is to allow us to get up from the table with a solution, and that it should not prevent us from beginning to try to find a solution?

Rev. Ian Paisley: Some hon. Members here today may remember a powerful and moving speech made by the hon. Member for Newry and Armagh (Mr. Mallon) some time ago, in which he castigated the fact that Sinn Fein had sat in a forum in Dublin with fellow members of what we, as Unionists, would call a pan-nationalist front--they were all nationalists, and they all wanted to bring about a united Ireland. They had a debate, and the hon. Gentleman saw the whites of their eyes. If he could not persuade his own kind, if the Dublin Government could not persuade their own kind and if all the diverse groups in the Irish Republic could not do so, why does he say that he is a realist? Why does he say that, if the Unionists looked at the whites of the eyes of the nationalists, a great miracle would happen?

Tonight, we need to come back to harsh realities. I have heard people say that they are realists, but what are the realities? We have been told by the hon. Member for Newry and Armagh that the subject of tonight's debate is a poisoned chalice that is to be handed to the people taking part in the talks, but the subject was raised by the leader of the hon. Gentleman's party, the hon. Member for Foyle (Mr. Hume), in 1992 when he said in regard to talks that

"there can be no guns on the table, under the table or outside the door."

That is my position, and it is the position of any democrat in Northern Ireland.

I am not in the business of talking to murderers. I am not in the business of talking to those who went to the children's hospital before Christmas to try to murder my colleague and assistant in Europe, and who put a bullet through an incubator in a children's intensive care ward. I neither want to see their eyeballs, nor to do business with them. The basis for talks was to be

"no guns on the table, under the table or outside the door."

Moving the new clause, the hon. Member for Spelthorne (Mr. Wilshire) said something that I could have said--that he is for decommissioning as originally

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set out in the statements made by various people. Dick Spring, the Foreign Secretary of the Irish Republic, said after the Downing street declaration was signed--and before the ink was dry on the paper--that

"we are talking about a permanent cessation of violence, and we are talking about the handing up of arms, with the insistence it would not be the case of 'we are on a temporary cessation to see what the political process offers'."

It was not some belligerent Unionist who said that, but the Foreign Secretary of the Irish Republic. However, the hon. Member for Newry and Armagh has argued tonight that we must have some political bait to attain decommissioning. Mr. Spring went on to say on 1 June 1994:

"There will have to be a verification of the handing over of arms . . . it has to be permanent and there has to be evidence of it."

Just after that, the Secretary of State said on Radio Telefis Eireann that

"the IRA will have to give up its guns and explosives to prove violence is over."

Those conditions were set not by Unionists, but by the Government.

The hon. Member for Newry and Armagh said that he wanted the Prime Minister to come to the Dispatch Box; I should like the Prime Minister to come here and repeat to the House a statement he made to us. He said that the IRA would hand over a substantial tranche of arms to start with and then, when the talks commenced, hand over a further instalment of arms every month. I said at the time, "Prime Minister, I have one question. How are you going to do that? Say they give you a large tranche of arms, we have a month's discussion, and then they say that they won't give any more. What are you going to do? Throw them out?"

Once people get into talks, they are in and can do what they like. They can swear that they have renounced violence, as did certain people who will be sitting at the table in a fortnight's time. Now those people say that they will not hand over one weapon. We need to be realists.

Albert Reynolds, who was still in circulation at that time, said:

"if all the weapons were decommissioned before a settlement was found . . . that would be a recipe for disaster."

He had done a complete somersault. He must have been singing before making that wonderful statement, and on something stronger than buttermilk. Martin McGuinness, the colour of whose eyes the hon. Member for Newry and Armagh wants us to see, said:

"when we talk to the British Government we will not talk about the decommissioning of IRA arms, we will talk about the dismantling of partition."

The hon. Member for Newry and Armagh made much tonight of the process of decommissioning, but there is no process whatever on either side.

Strong statements were made at Washington 3 about arms having to be found out and so forth, and President Clinton said:

"Paramilitaries on both sides must get rid of their bombs and guns for good and the spectre of violence must be banished",

and the Prime Minister reiterated:

"All-party talks are impossible until moves are made on decommissioning."

That idea was sold to the people of Northern Ireland by the British Government. Unfortunately, some of us believed it. We believed that they would do as they said.

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I find it rather amusing that the hon. Member for Newry and Armagh can tell the House today about the great obstacles to the talks, when he was the man who moved that there should be no vote when I tried to bring the matter to a head so that we could make a decision. He said that there would never be a vote. Without a vote, how can we bring the matter to a head? Like Pilate, he washed his hands and told us that we were holding the process back. From what? I want a decision on decommissioning, and I want to know what the British Government, the Dublin Government and the hon. Gentleman are up to on decommissioning.

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