US-UK RELATIONS:THE NEED for US congressional approval for the sale of American arms to the RUC was raised by US president Jimmy Carter in discussions with the British prime minister Margaret Thatcher in 1979, according to confidential files released today in Belfast.
The revelation is contained in a dispatch from the British embassy in Washington to the foreign and colonial office in London on December 22nd, 1979.
The official, who signed himself “Henderson”, felt that Whitehall would share his surprise at the president’s remarks to Mrs Thatcher at their meeting on December 17th, 1979 that “congressional approval would be necessary if the sale of revolvers for the RUC were to take place”.
Mr Carter told the prime minister that house speaker Tip O’Neill “had enough signatures to a document to block such approvals”. Mr O’Neill, one of the powerful group of Irish-American politicians known as “the four horsemen”, was close to Irish government and SDLP thinking.
In his letter to the British government, the embassy official stated that “the requirement would be purely political, deriving from an undertaking given by the US Secretary of State, Cyrus Vance to Speaker O’Neill in July”.
He also mentioned “the rumpus which Congressman [Mario] Biaggi and his supporters could be expected to provoke if it got out that export licences for the guns were likely to be approved”.
The official added that extensive inquiries on Capitol Hill had found no trace of any draft congressional resolution relating specifically to the sale of the guns, still less ones drafted by Mr O’Neill.
He told London: “I think we can be confident that no such resolution or document exists.”
The state department speculated that the president “must have been speaking figuratively” in referring to a signed document.
But whatever the explanation, “the hard fact remains that the president subsequently spoke to Mr O’Neill and failed to shift him from his adamant opposition to the sale”.
The official added that for the moment there was “little scope for action” by the British embassy “on the Hill”.
Mr O’Neill had a poor relationship with Mrs Thatcher following a speech in Dublin in 1979 in which he complained that the North had been made “a political football” at Westminster.
In 1984, his influence was crucial in getting White House opinion behind the report of the New Ireland Forum after Mrs Thatcher had curtly dismissed its options with the phrase, “out, out, out”.