| Good Friday Agreement |
Website Links For Belfast |
Information AboutGood Friday Agreement |
|
MAIN PROVISIONS
Vague wording of some of the provisions (described as "constructive ambiguity"), which helped ensure acceptance of the agreement at the time, served to postpone debate on some of the more contentious issues - most notably paramilitary decommissioning, police reform and normalisation. A date of May 2000 was set for total disarming of all paramilitary groups. This was not achieved and delayed the establishment of the Assembly and Executive, because one of the four main parties in the Assembly - Provisional Sinn Féin - was "inextricably linked" to the largest paramilitary group, the Provisional IRA , and Unionists refused to share power with this party, while the PIRA remained armed. The Assembly and Executive were eventually established in December 1999 on the understanding that decommissioning would begin immediately, but were suspended within two months due to lack of progress, before being re-established in May 2000 as Provisional IRA decommissioning eventually began. Aside from the decommissioning issue, however, ongoing paramilitary activity (albeit relatively low level compared to the past) by the Provisional Irish Republican Army - e.g. arms importations, "punishment beatings", intelligence-gathering and rioting - was also a stumbling block. The overall result of these problems was to damage confidence among Unionists in the Agreement, which was exploited by the anti-Agreement DUP which eventually defeated the pro-Agreement UUP in the 2003 Assembly election. The UUP had already resigned from the power-sharing Executive in 2002 following arrests of Provisional Sinn Féin personnel on charges of gathering intelligence for use by terrorists. (These charges were eventually dropped in 2005 on the controversial grounds that pursual would not be "in the public interest". Immediately afterwards, one of the accused Provisional Sinn Féin members, Denis Donaldson was exposed as a Government agent.) In 2004, negotiations were held between the two governments, the DUP, and Sinn Féin on an agreement to reestablish the institutions. These talks failed, but a document published by the governments detailing changes to the Belfast Agreement became known as the ' Comprehensive Agreement '. On 26 September 2005 , however, it was announced that the Provisional Irish Republican Army had completely decommissioned its arsenal of weapons and "put them beyond use". Nonetheless, many Unionists , most notably the DUP, remain sceptical and agreement on how to restore the power-sharing assembly had not been reached as of March 2006 . REFERENDA In May 1998 there were separate referenda in Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland to endorse the Belfast Agreement. The "No" vote in Northern Ireland came predominantly from unionists opposed to perceived concessions being made to Nationalists and Republicans . However Opinion Poll s suggest a slim majority of unionists may have voted "Yes". In the Republic of Ireland the electorate voted upon the Nineteenth Amendment . This amendment both permitted the state to comply with the Belfast Agreement and provided for the removal of the 'territorial claim' contained in Articles 2 and 3. The Republic of Ireland voted upon the Amsterdam Treaty on the same day. The results of the two, simultaneous referenda on the Belfast Agreement were as follows: SEE ALSO
EXTERNAL LINKS
|
|
|