LONDON -- The British and Irish governments released yesterday the blueprint of
a final agreement on Northern Ireland peace negotiations. It called, among
other things, for the Republic of Ireland to revise its hallowed and 60-year
constitutional claim to the six British-controlled counties on the island's
north side.
Officials for both governments cautioned that the proposal was not solid but
represented only "our best guess at what could be a generally acceptable
outcome."
But the proposal nonetheless was expected to help break the logjam at Northern
Ireland peace negotiations, which resumed yesterday after a holiday break.
The negotiations have been proceeding haltingly for 18 months with the two main
negotiators -- mainstream Protestant unionists and Sinn Fein, the political
wing of the IRA -- as yet to talk to each other directly.
The proposal's release was prompted by a newspaper leak. Over the weekend,
London's Daily Telegraph printed details of a London-Dublin agreement text,
prompting the two governments to release their own version of the proposed
agreement yesterday.
According to the Telegraph, the Irish government still had fundamental
disagreements with the British government.
The Irish, according to the paper, wanted an agreement that would lead the way
to a united Ireland while the British sought a compromise that would lead only
to power-sharing government bodies between the Republic and the island's six
northern counties, which have been under British control since the Ireland
partitioning agreement of 1921.
The British-Irish blueprint agreement released yesterday said only that the two
governments would "not have a problem" agreeing to "changes" in Articles 2 and
3 of the Irish Constitution. Those articles stake the republic's claim to
Northern Ireland by stating that the national territory "consists of the whole
of Ireland, its islands and the territorial seas."
Presumably, a final agreement would call for the Republic of Ireland to
renounce that claim on the north.
At the same time, said the proposal released by both governments, Dublin and
London could readily agree to a north-south ministerial council that would work
jointly on issues equally relevant to both north and south -- such as tourism
and agriculture.
More significantly, the proposal called for a Northern Ireland Assembly that
would be elected by a system of "proportional representation," giving weighted
representation to Northern Ireland's 60 percent Protestant and 40 percent
Catholic population.
A previous Northern Ireland assembly was dissolved in the early 1970s after a
bitter civil rights uprising by Catholics who said all Northern Ireland
government bodies were tipped unfairly toward Protestant control.
None of the proposals in the blueprint released yesterday is new. They have
been considered and proposed openly since the Anglo-Irish Agreement and a peace
negotiation framework agreement of the mid-'90s.
But the proposals represent the first significant and concrete blueprint for
current peace negotiators in Belfast, who began their current round of talks in
June 1996, to work on.
Yesterday, as the blueprint was released, it received cautious approval from
the Ulster Unionist Party, the main party representing Northern Ireland's
Protestants, as well as the Social Democratic and Labor Party, representing
mainstream nationalists who believe in Ireland's future unification but only if
that can be achieved peacefully and democratically.
Sinn Fein, the political wing of the IRA and voice for hard-line nationalists
who want British control in the province to end immediately, withheld immediate
reaction.
             End of Article

This is some of the sadest news I've read in a while.  It is a blow to moral and it is bullshit, to put it bluntly.  Those are Freestaters at work there.  I am trying to compose a list of these traitors from the Republic, if you can help me out in any way please E-mail me.  Thanks- Raibeart (FenianBoyo).

List so far:
Andrews
Ahern