Review will be short and focus on arms issue only, says Mandelson

The review of the Belfast Agreement prompted by the suspension of the executive will be short and sharply focused on the single issue of decommissioning, the Northern Ireland Secretary of State, Mr Peter Mandelson, indicated yesterday.

At the same time, he said the scaling down of the British military presence in Northern Ireland - the "normalisation" of society as he put it - went "very clearly hand in hand" with decommissioning.

Mr Mandelson also stressed that other projects in hand - specifically implementing the Patten recommendations on the RUC's reform - would proceed in any event.

Mr Mandelson was addressing the 10th anniversary meeting in London of the British-Irish Inter-Parliamentary Body, a forum of 25 TDs and senators and 25 MPs and members of the House of Lords, which meets to discuss matters of common interest, generally Northern Ireland or Anglo-Irish relations.

In his speech yesterday morning before flying to Belfast to meet the Minister for Foreign Affairs, Mr Cowen, Mr Mandelson made clear he wanted a short review, but he gave no precise timescale. "I hope that the suspension will be short. I intend it to be . . . I do not want direct rule to continue for a moment longer than necessary," he said. In response to questions as to whether he would allow his and Mr Cowen's review to examine issues beyond decommissioning, as the Ulster Unionist Party wishes, Mr Mandelson said he wanted no preconditions by any party in the review.

"The last thing people in Northern Ireland want is for politicians to find more preconditions, more pretext for not operating the agreement and institutions," he told the British Labour Party's former Northern Ireland spokesman, Mr Kevin McNamara.

Mr Mandelson defended his decision last Friday to suspend the executive and other institutions set up under the agreement.

"If we had found any way of securing enough confidence for the institutions to continue, we would have taken it. The bedrock of the Good Friday agreement is cross-community support. Without consensus across the political spectrum, institutions cannot be sustained. It is not a matter of taking one side or the other. The only side that I am on is that of the agreement as a whole and the interests of both traditions invested in it.

"Decommissioning is not a unionist or a British fixation. The statements of John Hume and Seamus Mallon confirm that, as do the calls made by President Clinton and Senator Kennedy.

"Nor is it an issue only in the minds of politicians. It has been called for by Protestant and Catholic, from all corners of Ireland, North and South. That it must happen is agreed by leader writers from the News Letter to the Irish News to the Boston Globe. And I do not just mean republican decommissioning. The onus is on every paramilitary to dispose of illegally held arms for politics to work properly.

"It was and remains a crucial part of building consensus, a signal that paramilitaries - from all sides - were committed to playing their part in building a new, peaceful Northern Ireland."

He said he was committed to good government in Northern Ireland for all the people of Northern Ireland. Had he not suspended the executive, it would have collapsed and this would have had "dire long-term consequences" for the ability of both governments to revive it and the other institutions.

He said that in the aftermath of his decision, the meeting on Saturday of the Ulster Unionist Council had been more constructive than destructive.

He said that after the suspension there had been "one very positive development". "We received a report from Gen de Chastelain's decommissioning commission. The commission reported the IRA had indicated the context in which they would initiate a comprehensive process to put arms beyond use . . . I do not for a moment underestimate the significance of this. If it means what it appears to mean, it may be the first sign that the IRA are, after all, prepared to give up their arms.

"We need to find out what the context is in which the IRA says it will put arms beyond use. Brian Cowen and I intend to follow this up urgently, first by exploring with Gen de Chastelain what lies behind Friday's report. But in the situation we faced on Friday, it was too unspecific and it came too late. It provides the basis for answering Seamus Mallon's `whether' question, but not his `when' question or `how'."

Mr Mandelson praised the executive and, without exception, those who served on it. "The institutions set up under the Good Friday agreement have proved to be the most effective, most democratic form of government that Northern Ireland has ever known. I rejoice in the fact that there are no longer strangers, no more outsiders from Northern Ireland's administration.

"Northern Ireland finally had a truly representative executive, with members drawn from all the major pro-agreement parties and including two of its opponents. It underlines that there are no second-class citizens in Northern Ireland any more . . ."

Notwithstanding the suspension, Mr Mandelson said he would continue to advance the programmes of positive reform that flowed from the agreement.

"I have faced calls to suspend the implementation of the Patten report on policing while the institutions are on hold. This is just not possible. In the words of the chief constable, `the vast bulk of the recommendations are simply about good and effective policing'. Policing is not a partisan issue to be traded as if it were part of some political score sheet, and it must not be used to give comfort to any political party . . .

"A nine-to-one religious imbalance [in the RUC] cannot be allowed to continue. A police service that is not representative of the society it serves cannot hope to be truly effective."