The suspended Stormont Assembly could be reinstated before Easter, Northern Ireland Secretary Peter Mandelson said today. There was a window of opportunity to get the Province's power sharing executive working again next month, he told Irish radio.
“I think it is possible that with goodwill and good faith on each side there is a chance of resolution. There is a window of opportunity in April before Easter to get the institutions up, but it requires people stretching and being prepared to take more risks,” Mr Mandelson said. “It requires both sides to see the situation from the other person's point of view, and being prepared to accommodate their point of view. The idea that one person needs to move and it will all fall into place - that is not realistic.”
Mr Mandelson conceded during the hour-long interview that he still had doubts whether his decision to suspend the Assembly last month was the right thing to have done. “Most days I wonder could I have done something different, could I have made a different decision. At the time I felt gutted,” he said.
But he felt certain that had he not acted the peace process would have been thrown into chaos. “David Trimble would have walked out of his post as first minister and we would have had a leaderless, rudderless government going for six weeks, at the end of which we would have had the most divisive, polarised, possibly bloody election campaign over the Assembly,” he said.
Later Mr Mandelson hinted there could be greater flexibility on the decommissioning timetable than the Good Friday Agreement currently allows for. “If people want some more space and some more time to sort that (decommissioning) out they need to reciprocate,” he said. “They need in turn to give others the reassurance they do intend to decommissioning, that the commitment is firm but they want to do it in a way and within a time frame that is easier for them. Well, we can all give a bit of give and take in this situation.”
