[Congressional Record Volume 140, Number 144 (Thursday, October 6, 1994)]
[Senate]
[Page S]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Printing Office [www.gpo.gov]


[Congressional Record: October 6, 1994]
From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]

 
                   THE SITUATION IN NORTHERN IRELAND

  Mr. BRADLEY. Mr. President, it has been over a month since the IRA 
answered the challenge posed by the Downing Street Declaration and 
announced ``a complete cessation of military operations.'' Since then, 
discussions among the parties to the conflict have continued, and 
representatives of Northern Ireland's divided community have visited 
the United States. Now that the political process is well underway, it 
makes sense to step back and place these developments in context. In 
this way, we can better understand how we in the United States can help 
foster the process leading to reconciliation and peace.
  I believe that a viable peace process must be based on four 
principles: rejection of violence, respect for human and civil rights, 
encouragement of political negotiations, and support for economic 
development. While there has been progress in each of these areas, more 
is needed to support the fragile political process now underway.
  The IRA's August 31 announcement is a challenge to all parties to 
halt the violence and give negotiations a chance. The IRA did not have 
a monopoly on violence, and the IRA alone cannot end it. Indeed, over 
the past year, more victims have been killed by loyalist paramilitaries 
than by the IRA.
  These loyalist paramilitaries must now halt their violence. This will 
require courageous political leadership in the Unionist community. As 
Irish Foreign Minister Dick Spring stated in his address before the 
United Nations General Assembly, ``We hope that responsible political 
leaders in the Unionist community will make their voices strongly heard 
on this issue, as many have done already, and that a complete cessation 
of violence will ensue on the loyalist side also.''
  The peace process will not propser without respect for human and 
civil rights. The people of Northern Ireland have been subject to 
emergency regulations restricting their rights to counsel and jury 
trials. These have inevitably resulted in miscarriages of justice.
  We all know of Paul Hill, whose story is told in the movie, ``In the 
Name of the Father.'' I have also been following the case of the 
``Ballymurphy Seven,'' in which seven young men were charged for a 
crime on the basis of confessions taken while the boys were being held 
incommunicado, a practice ruled illegal last month by the European 
Commission for Human Rights.
  Human rights must be accompanied by civil rights. While anti-Catholic 
discrimination in employment and other areas of life has been reduced, 
it has not been eliminated. Catholic unemployment rates are still 
double those of Protestants, stoking resentment and widening cleavages 
in society.
  As long as all the people of Northern Ireland lack legal safeguards 
and full civil rights, these kinds of issues will arise to undermine 
the process of reconciliation that must underlie the peace process.
  Reconciliation is even more important now because, for the first time 
in decades, there is a peace process to support.
  John Hume took the first courageous step to launch the process when 
he entered into dialogue with Gerry Adams. Indeed, John Hume is the 
hero of behind the current hopes. Espousing a message of nonviolence, 
reconciliation, and economic development, he has opposed the forces of 
terror on both sides of the sectarian divide. He has worked tirelessly 
to build bridges and take the gun out of Northern Ireland's politics.
  When Adams asked to come to the United States, I believed that 
granting him a visa would advance the cause of peace that Hume had 
launched, so I supported his request in a letter to President Clinton. 
The President's decision to admit Adams became a central part of this 
administration's constructive involvement in fostering this fragile 
peace process.
  The divided community of Northern Ireland does not exist in a vacuum. 
Without cooperation from the governments of the Irish Republic and the 
United Kingdom, the political process would be stillborn. In the 
Downing Street Declaration, the Irish and British Governments provided 
the framework for building on the Hume-Adams opening. They are now 
working on a Joint Framework Document setting out their views on the 
substance of an accommodation which can be used to stimulate the 
process, without trying to impose a solution. That is for the divided 
people of Northern Ireland to determine for themselves.
  Now that they have come this far, all the parties must negotiate 
creatively, and in good faith, to develop a vision for the future and a 
blueprint to implement that vision.
  Now that politics is replacing violence as idiom for politics in 
Northern Ireland, it is time to turn to the task of economic 
reconstruction. Peace brings opportunity, and once it is clear that 
negotiations have replaced violence as the currency of political 
discourse, there will be there is no shortage of business people in New 
Jersey and elsewhere ready to invest, not out of sentiment, but for 
sound business reasons.
  The administration is moving ahead to work with the inhabitants of 
Northern Ireland to lay the economic underpinning for peace. John Hume 
came to Washington with a number of creative ideas for involving 
American business in the development of Northern Ireland and the border 
counties of the Irish Republic. I hope the administration will respond 
creatively to Hume's proposals and look for innovative ways, within our 
tight budget, to respond to his ideas.
  Economic development is doubly important because it is an integrating 
force. Economic development requires and creates cooperation among all 
the people of Northern Ireland, and across the Border, regardless of 
religion or communal ties. As Hume wrote in the September 23, 1994, 
Washington Post, ``reconstruction goes hand in hand with 
reconciliation.''
  The road to reconciliation is paved with security, human and civil 
rights, political negotiation, and economic development. The people of 
Northern Ireland, along with the governments of the United Kingdom and 
Ireland, have taken the courageous first steps down this road. They 
deserve our full support--governmental and private--as they choose 
peace.

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