Trimble meets ex-weapons inspector
Ulster Unionist leader, David Trimble tonight held wide ranging talks in South Africa with an African National Congress official who was a former weapons inspector in Northern Ireland.
The Stormont First Minister, who is in Johannesburg for the Earth Summit, met Cyril Ramaphosa on the Northern Ireland peace process, updating him on the sectarian street clashes which have dogged Belfast all summer.
A close aide to Mr Trimble revealed tonight: “The two men had very wide ranging discussions in a Johannesburg hotel.
“They met for over an hour and discussed community relations and the lessons which could be drawn on that from South Africa.
“They also discussed the interface violence in Belfast and the need for all parties in the political system to take responsibility for their actions and maintain movement towards a political resolution of the problems in the province.
“In particular the two men focused on the need of parties not to misuse problems on the outside of government to suit their own political agendas.”
Mr Trimble, who is also visiting Cape Town later this week to look at community relations projects, yesterday accused Republican leaders of stoking up tensions along the peace lines in north and east Belfast for political ends.
He claimed: “While there is violence coming from loyalist paramilitaries, and we have criticised that, the basic underlying problem is the fact that republican paramilitaries decided to hot up the interfaces this summer and use it as a political tool to attack the new policing arrangements (and Nationalist) SDLP participation on the Policing Board,” he said.
“It was a cynical political manoeuvre. It has backfired on them.
“As they have discovered in the past and as we all know, once you start to stoke up violence, you cannot control it.
“But the republican leadership should not have gone down this course.”
The discussions between Mr Trimble, who later this month faces a crucial meeting of his party’s ruling council on the future of power sharing with Sinn Fein, and Mr Ramaphosa also briefly touched on the issue of paramilitary disarmament.
Mr Ramaphosa and former Finnish president Martti Ahtisaari stepped down from their roles as independent weapons inspectors of the IRA arms dumps after the republican terror group carried out its first act of decommissioning last year.
They were appointed in May 2000 and inspected IRA weapons dumps on three occasions.
It is understood the first batch of weapons which was destroyed by the IRA were drawn from the dumps scene by Mr Ramaphosa and Mr Ahtisaari.
The discussions took place just hours after Mr Trimble arrived in South Africa for the Earth Summit where he is representing the Northern Ireland power sharing government.
