Downing Street Says » Northern Ireland

» Monday, December 13, 2004

Northern Ireland

Asked to characterise the Prime Minister’s talks with Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams, the Prime Minister’s Official Spokesman (PMOS) told journalists that after last week we were at the stage of testing where the parties were, there would be further meetings over the next few days. Given that the two parties parties, rightly or wrongly, won’t talk to each other, that was our position. The two governments had put forward what they thought was a compromise position last week, whereby photographs would be taken but not published until the Executive was set up. That had been rejected by the IRA. We had to therefore find out people’s views on that. We had heard Sinn Fein’s view. No doubt we would get the DUP’s view as well. Asked if it was frustrating having to deliver messages to each party, the PMOS said that on the issue of Northern Ireland you didn’t last too long if you got easily frustrated. The Government recognised the reality as it was and acted accordingly. There was no point getting frustrated. You had do whatever was necessary to advance the peace process. The reality at the moment was that one party would not talk to the other.

No Comments »

No comments yet.

RSS feed for comments on this post.

Post a public comment

Name (required)
E-mail (required)
(You must give an email address, but it will not be displayed to the public.)
Website
(You may give your website, and it will be displayed to the public.)

Comments:

This is not a way of contacting the Prime Minister. If you would like to contact the Prime Minister, go to the 10 Downing Street official site.

Privacy note: Shortly after posting, your name and comment will be displayed on the site. This means that people searching for your name on the Internet will be able to find and read your comment.

Original PMOS briefings are © Crown Copyright. Crown Copyright material is reproduced with the permission of the Controller of HMSO and the Queen's Printer for Scotland. Click-use licence number C02W0004089. Material is reproduced from the original 10 Downing Street source, but may not be the most up-to-date version of the briefings, which might be revised at the original source. Users should check with the original source in case of revisions. Comments are © Copyright contributors. Everything else is © Copyright Downing Street Says.