PADDY McGARVEY,
Sir, - Street rioting by civilians and guerilla activity by paramilitaries continue in Belfast because the peace process went wrong-footed from the start. The parliament is in the wrong place, and with a franchise permanently rigged against the Protestant unionists.
The Catholic bone of contention against a gerrymandered parliament that led to 30 years of sustained violence by the IRA is now a Protestant bone. The Belfast Agreement, afforded political sainthood because it emerged on Good Friday, merely swapped roles in the conflict.
Executive membership of the ruling cabinet is enforced by the rule of "all in or all out". It makes Northern Ireland the most bizarre of Western democracies - unworkable.
Yet the solution is quite simple, and has worldwide precedents observed by the Cambridge-based peace charity Irish Parliament Trust: move the two Irish parliaments away from their ethnic centres. When dogs fight constantly over a bone, create a bigger and better bone elsewhere. Ignore the rioting as a political factor, but sidestep it by removing its cause, the disputed parliament.
A cautious start could be made in a large tent. Place it in a well ordered village - say, Ballyjamesduff, Co Cavan. That's in the Republic but still in Ulster. And let the Assembly and Executive have a few days out from the strife in Belfast. The Dáil could meet there on alternate days. Then let the debate begin on a shared, neutral-site capital for two free-franchise parliaments. That way Ballyjamesduff - there are other likely choices - would become Ireland's Berne, which benignly rules a country of four languages, three races and several religions. The riotous street chemistry of Belfast, which also breeds the threatening paramilitaries, will soften, then dissolve.
Ottawa, Berne, Brasilia, Canberra, Abuja, Putrajaya (now being built "for reasons of race harmony", according to the Malaysian government) are shining examples of an idea originated by thousands of north-Irish Scots Presbyterians fleeing Queen Anne's 1704 Test Act throughout the rest of the 18th century.
They took military control of the American Revolution (eight Ulster-born generals) and fought in the Congress for seven years after the war to stop America having a theocratic capital like London, wherein all must adhere to one super-religion - hence the courageous decision to build the original non-conformist seat of government, Washington, on which so many others are now modelled.
Rival ethnic and religious groups live in harmony when the centre of power is not in either camp. Ireland needs only the compromise of a shared capital, something like the proposal the Saudi government made in the March intervention on Israel.
Then there's Cyprus, Lebanon, Indonesia, maybe even Kashmir. Worth a try, surely. - Yours, etc.,
PADDY McGARVEY, Director, Irish Parliament Trust, Cambridge, England.