CARDINAL Daly has warned Mr John Major not to allow his internal party political difficulties to damage the Northern Ireland peace process.
In his World Day of Peace homily at Armagh Cathedral, the Catholic Primate also praised Sinn Fein and the loyalist political parties for successfully maintaining the ceasefires for 16 months. He urged that they should be included in political talks now.
The Cardinal said the "political vacuum" in Northern Ireland had lasted too long.
"Refusal of political movement is still the greatest obstacle to peace. It may well be politically difficult for Mr John Major to initiate significant political movement in Northern Ireland at this time but it would be most unfortunate if any plausibility were given to the suspicion that peace in Northern Ireland would be allowed to suffer because of internal party political difficulties at Westminster.
"I do not believe that the prime minister would wish this to happen. I am convinced of his personal commitment to establishing peace in Northern Ireland. If he can deliver this, it could well be his greatest political achievement and would ensure his place in history."
On decommissioning, the Cardinal expressed his belief that "the only way which offers a realistic hope of getting weapons taken out of commission is for the paramilitary organisations themselves to decide to put them out of commission. In turn, the only people whose influence could persuade them to do so are the political leaders who support their political aims.
"It is abundantly clear that these political leaders will agree to do so only in the context of an overall political settlement. It is therefore clearly necessary that there should be political talks in which these same political leaders take part. If there are other realistic and practical ways of bringing decommissioning about, I am not aware that anyone has yet identified them.
"Do the said political leaders sincerely intend to lay weapons and the threat of weapons aside? Are they genuinely committed to exclusively peaceful methods and to the democratic process?
"The sincerity of their intention and the genuineness of their commitment are, I believe, already strongly indicated by the fact that, in spite of obvious internal and external difficulties and pressures, they have succeeded in maintaining the ceasefires for 16 months.
"No one should underestimate that fact or dismiss it as of little significance. The leaders have worked very hard and have taken real risks in achieving this. I do not believe that they deserve political exclusion at this time. The alternative to their failure is truly awful to contemplate.
Cardinal Daly went on: "It is surely the commitment to exclusively peaceful methods' and to the democratic process, rather than actual physical decommissioning, which is the ultimate precondition to talks."
He described "the democratic process in the terms spelled out in the Downing Street Declaration, defining consent as "freely and concurrently given, North and South" and "achieved and exercised with and subject to the agreement and consent of the majority of the people of Northern Ireland."
He continued: "Acceptance of the key principles of agreement and consent seem to me, and I believe, would seem to most reasonable persons, to be enough to establish a commitment to exclusively peaceful methods (and to) the democratic process
"I submit that, if Sinn Fein were to declare their acceptance of the key principles of the democratic process, namely consent and agreement, then the British government could scarcely refuse to accept their declaration as sufficiently establishing their commitment to exclusively peaceful methods. Sinn Fein, for their part, could scarcely refuse to commit themselves to principles solemnly formulated by the Irish Government."
Cardinal Daly also stressed that, given Sinn Fein's present distrust of the British government and disillusionment with the peace process, "significant movement in respect of prisoners is overdue and urgently needed."
He went on: "Surely Unionists could reasonably enter inclusive political dialogue in the certainty, that no final settlement could be concluded without the agreement and consent of the greater number of people in Northern. Ireland.
Warning that the euphoria generated by the Clinton visit would soon begin to dissipate unless there was political movement, Cardinal Daly concluded: "It is more than high time now to see negotiations under way as soon as possible, so that all paramilitary weapons may be decommissioned as a concomitant and as a consequence of political progress."
Earlier the Cardinal had strongly condemned the recent killings in Belfast. He quoted reports of a republican sympathiser saying that such killings strengthened republican moderates since they gave IRA members "something to do".
"I quote these reported remarks simply to show how consciences can be debauched and moral standards debased through the use of or support for violence. Could there be a more chilling example of this than to describe these infamous killings as giving bored people something to do and showing that killers can operate smoothly?"