A united Ireland must be able to accommodate the needs of unionists, Sinn Féin president Mr Gerry Adams said today.
In his clearest statement yet of what nationalists and republicans need to do to achieve Irish unity, the West Belfast MP told a World Economic Forum debate in New York that unionists could not be forced into a new republic.
During a debate on the North’s peace process, Mr Adams said: "The biggest challenge facing all of us who want a united Ireland is facing up to the reality that there is on the island of Ireland 20 per cent who don't, and we have to try and sort all that out.
"I don't think that we can force upon unionism an all-Ireland state which doesn't have their assent or consent and which actually reflects their sense of being comfortable, they having a place in that and being comfortable that they have ownership of it."
The debate also involved UUP leader Mr David Trimble, US President Bush's special adviser on Northern Ireland Mr Richard Haass, former Stormont talks chairman, Senator George Mitchell, nationalist SDLP leader Mr Mark Durkan and PUP’s Mr David Ervine.
The North’s Deputy First Minister Mr Durkan said unionists and nationalists needed to break the psyche of a gain for one community meant a loss for the other.
He said: "We need to be very clear when we talk about equality that we are talking about reaching equality not by subtraction, not by division but by all the multipliers the Agreement can give us and by adding on and reinforcing each other."
Mr Ervine described the recent media portrayal of his community as "the epitome of what was once called poor white trash".
The East Belfast MLA also criticised some unionists for assuming the Agreement was bad for them.
The forum was also warned by North’s First Minister, Mr Trimble, while the Belfast Agreement had delivered progress, there would be a "serious problem" at the next Assembly elections if unionist alienation was not addressed.
He said support for the Agreement among unionists was being chiselled away and there was a sense that some nationalists were using the accord as a "battering ram" to hollow out any sense of Britishness.
The Upper Bann MP said: "Now the process ought to be wholly inclusive but there has been a reluctance on the part of some to include that segment of opinion that has not been there from the outset."
Mr Haass told the forum while much progress had been made in the peace process, he was concerned by the nature of the dialogue between political leaders.
Acknowledging the putting of IRA weapons beyond use in October was an "important step," Mr Haass said decommissioning needed "to be a process and not a one-off event".
In an appeal to Sinn Fein to end its boycott of North’s new policing structures, Mr Haass repeated the US government's wish to see all parties taking their seats on the 19-member Police Board.
PA