A formal review of the Belfast Agreement will begin at Stormont today in an atmosphere of political gloom. What had originally been intended as a fine-tuning of the functions and procedures of an agreement broadly acceptable to both communities, could become a mechanism to unravel it.
The Assembly elections in Northern Ireland have altered the political landscape and injected considerable uncertainty into the situation.
The Irish and British Governments have insisted the Belfast Agreement is not open to re-negotiation, although they are prepared to consider change in the way it operates, provided that it is done by consensus. But the leader of the DUP, the Rev Ian Paisley, who now leads the largest unionist party in the North, appears determined to bring about fundamental change. At the same time, the pro-agreement parties within the Assembly are so divided on issues of decommissioning, policing and suspension of the institutions that they may be unable to provide an effective political counterweight.
The DUP has signalled a determination to step outside of the terms of this review in order to advance its demands. The Minister for Foreign Affairs, Mr Cowen, and the Northern Secretary, Mr Paul Murphy, will today make presentations on the purpose and course of the review and invite the political parties from the suspended Assembly to set out their ideas.
The DUP will be represented and has made a rather vague submission. In a calculated snub, however, Dr Paisley will travel to Downing Street next Thursday to present more detailed proposals for change to the British Prime Minister.
The central element of the DUP's approach is understood to involve the party's long-standing policy of devolving power to the Assembly as a whole, with committees taking executive decisions on a weighted majority basis. In time, power could be devolved to ministers but their decisions would still be subjected to committee oversight. The adoption of such an approach would represent a step backwards towards majoritarianism and run counter to a requirement for cross-community support in executive decision-making, one of the pillars of the agreement.
Some elements of the Belfast Agreement never worked. Others stuttered fitfully before succumbing to a lack of trust between the political parties. But the fault lay with paramilitarism and those who obstructed the agreement, rather than with the agreement itself. The task of this review is to identify whether there is any room for manoeuvre.
The DUP must be allowed the time and space to set out its political alternatives. The party, to date, has made no proposal to either government on what it would like to do with its new mandate. The challenge in the review is to coax Dr Paisley, Mr Peter Robinson and Mr Jeffrey Donaldson et al to outline their proposals for the future of an inclusive government in Northern Ireland.