Sir, - Everyone who has become involved in the mediation work of the peace process over the past 10 years has done so with one motive only: to stop the deep differences between the communities in Northern Ireland from causing any more death and destruction.
As a Northern priest put it to me recently, if trying to stop in the first instance further murder attempts on the lives of members of the RUC, the RIR and the British Army is not bridge-building, it is difficult to know what is. If, further, seeking to protect the lives and safety of civilians, Protestant and Catholic, North and South and in Britain from the likely fallout of such actions is not bridgebuilding, what is? Surely, of all the things needed to start the building of bridges and improving the chances of reaching agreement and stability, the most urgent and the most necessary was the ending of violence and killing, to which all other agendas were subordinate. It is a wicked travesty to suggest that someone, because they were involved in that bridgebuilding, is thereby disqualified from further involvement in that work in the future.
It is disappointing that there is so little political understanding, sometimes even at a high level, that the first thing nationalists needed to do to reach out to unionists (and the same holds in the opposite direction) was to persuade those from within their own tradition or community or with some shared political beliefs to adopt a democratic alternative, rather than to continue violent and futile attacks. Anyone who thinks that that was just nationalists making peace with nationalists instead of, or in preference to, with Unionists has not considered the matter very deeply.
There are those who have persistently attacked and misrepresented the peace process, sometimes in reasonable tones, but often with vitriol, and cast slurs on the judgement and integrity of many of those who took risks for peace, from John Hume to Mary McAleese. Can they make as good a claim to be first and foremost peacemakers and bridgebuilders trying to work in an unpartisan spirit? - Yours, etc.,
Special Adviser to the Taoiseach, Government Buildings, Dublin 2.