Sir, - In the few remaining weeks before the Good Friday Agreement finally runs into the ground some vital ingredients could still be introduced to it.
What we have had so far is extraordinary help from "kings from over the seas" (there would have been no agreement without Bill Clinton's wonderful emissary, George Mitchell), and a vast amount of hard work and commitment from governments, their advisers, and politicians on almost all sides. But we are still missing two old - fashioned essentials - repentance and forgiveness - without which it is a mistake to talk of peace.
Anyone privileged to hear the leading South African figures who have come to Ireland in support of our search for peace will agree that there was between these former antagonists an impressive measure of trust and goodwill between these former antagonists.
What we have seen in our own peace process is pragmatism and a certain vision of how to free up unblock the political impasse. But there has not been any apparent drawing together of hearts and minds and emotions. There has not been a reaching out in sorrow, in understanding, a concentration on the common humanity of all concerned. Words like repentance and forgiveness are shunned nowadays in favour of more trendier spins.
But all the same there are no lasting substitutes for them if peace is the goal. They are even more essential than putting weapons beyond use. - Yours, etc.,
Una O'Higgins O'Malley, Oughterard, Co. Galway.