Speech at the Palace of the Provincial Government San Sebastian

Remarks by Mr. Bertie Ahern

At the Palace of the Provincial Government,

San Sebastian,

April 2011

 

Ladies and Gentlemen, thank you for your warm welcome and for your kind invitation to talk to you this evening.

 

It is a great pleasure to be here in the Basque Country home to one of Europe’s most ancient peoples.

 

I have been looking forward to visiting San Sebastian for a long time and it is a city of truly breathtaking beauty and nowhere more so than here in the Palace of the Provincial Government.  This is as impressive a municipal building as any I have seen on my travels.  And the architecture in this city is fantastic.  Having travelled from Ireland, I want to say that the sunshine is also very welcome!  

 

I want to thank Markel Olano, the President of the Provincial Council of Gipuzkoa, for his presence today which is a great honour. 

 

I also want to thank him for his kind remarks.  Mr Olano’s party, the Basque Nationalist Party, and Fianna Fáil, the political party, I led in Ireland for 14 years are sister parties and we both are members of the same group in the European Parliament so it is always good to be introduced by a political ally and friend.

 

 

By way of my own introductory remarks, I suppose I should say a little bit about myself.  I retired from the Irish Parliament at the most recent General Election which was held in February of this year.  Prior to that I had been a member of the Dáil, Ireland’s national parliament, since 1977.  I represented the people of Dublin Central in the heart of our capital city for over three decades. 

 

I have spent 18 of the past 25 years at the cabinet table in Ireland.  I served as Chief Whip, Minister for Labour and then Minister for Finance in the Governments of Charles Haughey.  I was also the Minister for Finance in the Governments of Albert Reynolds.  And I was privileged to serve the Irish people for almost eleven years, as the Irish Prime Minister, which we call Taoiseach, before retiring from that office in 2008.

 

During my time as Taoiseach, I served as President of the European Council and I negotiated the draft EU constitution.  I was the first Irish political leader to win three successive General Elections in over 60 years.  But today, I want to talk largely about the issue which more than any other has defined my political career.  It is also the issue which I gave more hours to than any other.  That issue is, of course, the cause of peace and reconciliation in Ireland.

 

I am immensely privileged to be your invited guest today and to share with you my experience of peace through inclusive dialogue.  I hope to explain in some detail to you today how this came about.  I know that you too here in the Basque Country have experienced your own long conflict which has lasted for many years and caused much suffering. I hope that some of the insights I give you in terms of the Irish peace process can be of some assistance.

 

On my travels, people often ask me what my proudest achievement was as Taoiseach.  I always reply that is an easy one to answer!  To have the opportunity to make a contribution to the creation of a lasting peace in my own country has been the greatest privilege of my life.  Looking at the situation in the Basque Country, from afar, I believe that the opportunity and the underlying conditions now exist to bring a lasting peace settlement and reconciliation to the Basque Country and to Spain.  This is a golden opportunity which I hope you can seize because it will bring untold benefits to this generation and to the next generation.  

 

Peace has transformed Ireland, North and South, for the better.  People’s expectations have been lifted and despite the recent economic crisis, peace has brought greater prosperity to parts of our island that before had only known poverty, emigration and bloodshed.  Ireland’s international image has also changed for the positive and we are now a tourist and investment destination of choice for many Europeans.  That in itself is a huge economic bonus and could not have happened without a successful peace process. 

 

For much of my adult life, the violence in Northern Ireland had negatively defined people’s perceptions of the island of Ireland.  Over 3,000 men, women and children lost their lives in a vicious conflict that some thought would never end.  The problems of Northern Ireland also defined the relationship between the islands of Ireland and Britain.  When the conflict raged in Northern Ireland, it is fair to say that relations between our two Governments and, indeed, often between our two peoples, were characterised by mistrust, suspicion and sadly, at times, outright hostility. 

 

That thankfully has all changed and so much of that positive transformation has its roots in the Good Friday Agreement that myself and Tony Blair led the negotiations on.  Cooperation and friendship now define relations between the Irish and British Governments and our peoples.  More importantly still, armed conflict has stopped, and while a mindless minority of dissidents cling to the bad old ways, as we saw recently with the murder of a police officer two weeks ago by a republican terrorist organisation, violence as a means to political objectives in Northern Ireland has been largely consigned to the history books. 

 

In 1997, when I was first elected Taoiseach, there was no IRA ceasefire in place.  In fact, the last ceasefire had broken down the previous year in 1996 when the IRA had placed a bomb in Canary Wharf in London which caused millions of pounds in damages and tragically killed two people.  It was this type of carnage that I was determined to stop. 

 

I know that the situation here is that though ETA are currently on ceasefire, their armed campaign has lasted for over forty years.  At the time, I was elected Taoiseach the conflict in the North had already been running for 28 years and I felt that people in Ireland, North and South, were becoming increasingly weary of the conflict and a momentum for peace was building - as I believe is the case now in the Basque Country. There comes a time in every long conflict where the vast majority of people, even people who before may have saw armed struggle as the best solution, realise that they are trapped in a log-jam and that armed struggle can’t supersede democratic politics.  That pivotal point was reached in Ireland in the mid to late 1990s.

 

In many respects I believe that the Basque Country stands now where Ireland stood in the mid 1990s.  You are on the edge of a lasting peace but politicians here and in Spain need to be courageous and take some big and brave steps to reach that promised land.  As I said, in 1996, in Ireland, the IRA ceasefire broke down and we all experienced huge disappointment when there was a return to conflict.  However, another IRA ceasefire was called in July 1997 and peace from that point on gained an unstoppable momentum.  In 2006, you experienced the similar disappointment of the ending of a nine-month ceasefire when ETA bombed Madrid Airport.  But in very recent times a ceasefire has again been put in place. 

 

This presents a real opportunity.  I strongly welcome ETA’s announcement In January of this year that this ceasefire is “permanent, general, and internationally verifiable.”  Confirmation of a unilateral ceasefire by ETA would now create a real chance for reconciliation to begin to flourish.  I believe all democratically elected representatives should be conscious of the potential for progress this creates and the opportunity that this can bring to ensure a peaceful solution to a long running conflict.

 

I was determined to grab a similar opportunity for peace when I became Taoiseach in the Summer of 1997.  Co-incidentally, but as it turned out, very importantly, Tony Blair became Prime Minister of Britain around the same time.

 

We met early on and hit it off immediately which was not the norm for respective Prime Ministers of Ireland and the United Kingdom.  We did however have a common bond – a love of football!  From childhood, I have been a fan of Manchester United and Tony Blair is passionate about Newcastle United.  The fact that we had such a shared interest in sport helped to break the ice and build a friendship which was important to fostering reconciliation.

 

And while I am on the subject of football, I will digress slightly to say that when people in Ireland hear of San Sebastian they think of your wonderful football team, Real Sociedad.  This team is widely known and admired in Ireland because it was the team that one of Ireland’s most popular footballers, John Aldridge, played for at one stage in his very successful career.    In fact, John Aldridge was the first non-Basque player to play for Real Sociedad which I know he regards as a great honour.  John scored a lot of goals for your local team in the two years he played here and he remains a great hero in Ireland for his role in helping our national football team qualify for two World Cups.

 

While I am on the subject of national football teams, I want to say I am very interested to hear news of the Basque Country National Football team.  Football and sport are an integral part of national identity, pride and culture.  I know many people here would love to see the Basque Country Team play in the World Cup or the European  Championships, although given the quality of players you have I would not like to see you play Ireland too often.  At the end of the day, FIFA, the international football federation, will make the final call on this but if the United Kingdom can be represented by four national teams in international competition, a very strong case can be made for the Basque Country to be allowed to participate at this level.

 

Anyway to get back to business, as I was saying, as well as sharing a love of football, Tony Blair and I shared a broadly similar political philosophy and this too helped.  He was a proud British subject and I am an equally proud Irish republican but beyond these differences in background our basic political beliefs were similar.  And we both essentially believed in putting people before politics.  We both crucially agreed that addressing the Northern Ireland situation was a top priority for both of us.  We were both conscious how difficult the task was going to be and that, despite the genuine and best efforts of our predecessors, the situation had not proved itself amenable to resolution thus far. 

 

We knew that this was a project that would take a long time and monopolise much of our time but, at our first meeting as heads of our respective governments, Tony Blair and I decided that we had to try.  We felt we had a moral duty to stop the killing.  We knew we faced enormous challenges but we knew too that the prize of peace would be a great one.  We both made a pledge to each other - to give peace on the island of Ireland our overriding political priority and to work to remove the causes of conflict and to heal the wounds of the past. 

 

I want to point out that there are risks for politicians in challenging the status quo and in pursuing a peace strategy which will mean engaging with those who until recently had engaged or supported violence.  But the rewards are also great.  I understand that at this difficult economic time, the focus of regional and sovereign governments may be on the recession and the economic woes but a lasting peace can make its own contribution to restoring economic growth.  My own political philosophy has always been there can never be a wrong time to do the right thing.  And for democratic politicians no issue can be more important than stopping violence and ending killing.  Also, in politics, doing the right thing brings its own rewards.  The prize of creating history as the administration that finally brought an end to ETA’s campaign would surely help a sovereign government that right now is struggling in the opinion polls and is having a hard time dealing with the economic recession.  In Ireland, when I set out on the peace process, I was criticised especially by some in the media for engaging with people from organisations like Sinn Féin and the IRA who had only recently stopped using violence.  But the electorate understand that for peace to happen these people had to be talked to.  The fact that my Government were prepared to do it and to grasp this nettle, I believe actually helped our support base and, as I said at the start, I managed to lead my party to three successive election victories which had not happened prior to this since the era before the Second World War. 

 

In fairness, I want to say I can understand some of the caution in relation to Senor Zapatero’s Government in response to the latest ETA ceasefire.  In 2006, to his great credit, he had courageously moved in the early years of his administration, to commence peace talks in response to a previous ETA ceasefire.  His government were badly stung by ETA’s decision to scuttle these talks and return to conflict with the Madrid Airport bombing.  Zapatero was the subject of much criticism from the opposition Partido Popular, especially when it became clear that ETA had used the 2006 ceasefire to rearm and rebuild.  His judgement was called into question and his Government suffered a loss in public support and confidence. 

 

In response to the latest ETA ceasefire, it would be hard to blame Senor Zapatero for thinking once bitten, twice shy.  I accept that it will be a risk for him to engage again in peace talks after being let down previously.  But this risk for a lasting peace and a cessation of conflict is worth taking. 

 

Both the Irish and British Governments were initially very wary about engaging again with Sinn Féin following the IRA’s Canary Wharf bomb in 1996 but, in the end we did take a leap of faith.  Though trust had been damaged, we knew that dialogue and persuasion, not coercion and counter-terror, were the best routes to stop violence forever.  The breach of the IRA ceasefire in 1996 was a big setback for peace in Ireland but politicians on all sides recognised the process was never going to be easy or a walk in the garden.  The lesson from our peace process is not to stand still, not to let setbacks stop the progress towards peace and if at first you don’t succeed, try, try and try again. 

 

I believe that now there is a real and strong desire for peace to take root here in the Basque Country.  Circumstances have changed since the last broken ETA ceasefire in particular with Batasuna, the political party most associated with ETA, coming to the fore and making it abundantly clear that it is completely committed to a non-violent strategy.  I welcomed the fact too, of course, that Batasuna has been vocal in insisting that ETA must declare their ceasefire is unilateral.  A positive response from ETA in this regard may, I believe, be a game-changer and should be looked on generously and constructively by the Spanish Government.  In such a scenario, the page can be turned towards a new era of reconciliation.

 

In Ireland, we really began to turn that page from 1997 on.  Over the following almost 12 months from that first meeting in the Summer of 1997, Tony Blair and I engaged in a deeply intensive process of Talks around the conflict.  This also involved the main political parties in Northern Ireland.  The IRA restored its ceasefire in July 1997.  Very crucially, the Talks process itself was chaired by somebody from beyond the shores of the two islands, the legendary Senator George Mitchell, aided by friends from Canada and Finland respectively, General John de Chastelain and Prime Minister Harri Holkeri.  With invaluable input from the European Union and, most particularly, our good friend, the then President of the United States, Bill Clinton, the Talks gathered momentum in the Spring of 1998, building to a climax in early April of that year.

 

The aim of the Talks was a comprehensive agreement which addressed a range of issues at the heart of the conflict and to which the British and Irish Governments and the main political parties in Northern Ireland could sign up to.  It was a hugely tall order, given the lessons of history and it certainly had not been achieved before.

 

With good American pragmatism, Senator George Mitchell, the independent chairperson, set a deadline of Thursday, 9 April for the Talks, which were now taking place inside Castle Buildings in Stormont, Belfast.  The prospects for success as late as Monday of that week were anything but encouraging.  An opinion poll in a newspaper published around that time put public expectation of success at around 5%!  Talk about no pressure!

 

Looking back on it, that year was one of the most intensive of my life.  I put in literally hundreds of hours, always in the closest contact with Tony Blair, in face-to-face negotiations with the parties, in phone calls, in consultations with the British Government and my own Government and officials, as we sought to reach the elusive finishing line.  Many times, it looked as if matters were about to break down irretrievably.  We had crises, big and small.  We had nervous people who had never before met, let alone known each other, now sitting around the same negotiating table, seeking to hammer out an agreement that would bring us all a brighter, better future.  Not surprisingly, tensions were often high.  Sadly, we also had violence continuing in the streets – a graphic reminder to us about the stakes involved. 

 

Given the key position of the two Governments, as the sovereign powers involved and my role as Head of one of those Governments, I was personally deeply conscious of the responsibilities that lay on my shoulders.  But I was also aware of the huge opportunity that lay in our laps.  The prize for success was enormous and I decided to give it every effort I could.  I know that Tony Blair did precisely the same. 

 

And then, against all the odds, and to the surprise if not shock of many, we did achieve success and late in the afternoon of Friday, 10 April 1998 – a day late, not that that mattered – agreement was reached.  The day, in what we hoped was a good omen, happened to be Good Friday.  Accordingly, the document came to be called the Good Friday Agreement.  Some weeks later, and very critically, it was endorsed by the votes of the people of Ireland, North and South, in simultaneous referenda.  The Good Friday Agreement thus became, and remains, the settled will of the people of the island of Ireland.

 

I don’t know how familiar you may be with the terms of the Good Friday Agreement but, in broad terms, it constitutes the shared view of the British and Irish Governments, the Northern Ireland parties and indeed the people of the island of Ireland as a whole as to how relations are to be configured – within Northern Ireland, between North and South on the island of Ireland and between Ireland and Britain.  There are constitutional provisions to give effect to the constitutional changes involved – essentially enshrining the principle of the consent of the people of Northern Ireland as to whether the North is to remain part of the UK or join a United Ireland. It has institutional provisions for new partnership structures of government in Northern Ireland, and to capture co-operative arrangements between North and South in Ireland and between Ireland and Britain.  It also has provisions in regard to such diverse matters in Northern Ireland as policing, the administration of justice, victims of violence, economic, social and cultural issues, human rights, decommissioning of arms and prisoners associated with the conflict.  Very crucially, as mentioned, it had provision for the Agreement to be put to the people of the North and the South, in a simultaneous referendum on the same day. 

 

George Mitchell used to often say that implementation would be even more challenging than negotiation and he was right.  I took the best part of a decade to implement the Agreement.  Over that period, the institutions of the Agreement were suspended more often than not.   There was more stop than go.  The most difficult issues were the decommissioning of IRA weapons, and the transition to a new civilian police service with genuine cross-community support and participation.  As well as being technically complex, these were profoundly emotive questions.  They had to do with how the two communities in Northern Ireland interpreted the events of the previous thirty years, and with attitudes to the legitimacy of the power of State.  Negotiations were tortuous, complicated and seemingly endless.  It always seemed that as we solved the problems of one side, we created new problems for the other.  And an underlying difficulty remained that the majority unionist community remained profoundly divided over the very fundamentals of the Agreement. Enduring the ups and downs of the negotiations required enormous patience and stamina.  But neither Tony Blair nor I ever gave up hope.

 

When people ask me how we solved the problems in Northern Ireland and how we brought peace to somewhere which had for so long known only war and killing, my answer is invariably that it was not easy!  It took patience – lots of it - and I would say it was 99% perseverance and maybe 1% inspiration.  For any successful process of reconciliation following a long conflict, it is crucial to remember peace has to be built step-by-step.  It is a gradual, very slow process and no one should think peace and reconciliation will happen instantaneously following the wave of a magic wand.  It takes time and its take courage but it is a prize worth persevering for.  I believe it is the duty of every democratically elected politician to do so.  What, after all, is more important than peace and the prevention of conflict and killing?  

 

For me and Tony Blair, the political trick was to get agreement on the smallest issue and build on this and to bring people together.  It took time but it was all about human nature and psychology and when you showed people that those from communities that they thought were their mortal enemies did not have horns and were capable of reaching out, confidence grew that a lasting peace could be made.  It was important too to persuade people that peace would bring lasting economic and social benefits and that everyone’s quality of life would be better. 

 

We persevered, and we brought people together and I am delighted that, aided by important understandings achieved in the related St Andrews Agreement in the Autumn of 2006, we have been able to achieve the necessary conditions for the full implementation of the Good Friday Agreement.

 

As we meet here today, we now have a Northern Ireland at peace.  We have representatives of the two major traditions in Northern Ireland working constructively together in a partnership Executive in Belfast.  We have exciting new projects for co-operation being taken forward between North and South in the North/South Ministerial Council – including important work towards the creation of an island economy.  And we have unprecedented new co-operation taking place between the Irish Government and the British Government and its various devolved Administrations in the British Irish Council.  There is a new police force in the North, representative, and for the first time, having the support of, both communities.

 

Nobody in Northern Ireland needs now to feel threatened.  The Good Friday Agreement allows people in Northern Ireland to define themselves as British or Irish or both.  Democratic politics has provided a solution to the lasting problems in Northern Ireland because all sides accept the principle of consent that the majority of the people who live in Northern Ireland will decide democratically whether Northern Ireland maintains the Union with Britain or joins with the Republic of Ireland. 

 

In a similar way, I believe that the people in the Basque Country have a strong right to self-determination, and it is for the people who live here to democratically decide their future. Every person in the Basque Country, regardless of ethnic origin, and regardless of class, colour or creed has a democratic right to be considered Basque, Spanish or French and to engage fully in Basque democracy.  And I believe it is now becoming clearer and clearer that inclusive democratic politics can achieve so much more in terms of getting further autonomy or independence.  In this regard, one need look no further than Catalonia where the independence demands appear to be growing and strengthening – not by means of violence or intimidation – but by means of peaceful civic protest and democratic progressive politics.  That is the way it should be and it is the way towards a better future.

 

 

In Ireland, the blocked energy that has been released by the new positive dispensation that stems from a thriving peace process is wonderful to observe.  Communities who were once age-old enemies are working together in a new spirit of partnership and neighbourliness.  Northern Ireland is involved in an intensified attempt to recover the place of global prominence it once enjoyed in business and commerce.   And all of this is spreading a new sense of hope, a new sense of optimism for the future of the island, especially because our young people and the next generation are not going to live through the cycle of violence and murder which my generation witnessed for too long.

 

Our President, Mary McAleese, a person whom I admire greatly, and who herself was born and brought up in Northern Ireland, before going on to become a hugely respected and successful President of Ireland, will in May host the visit of Queen Elizabeth II which is the very first time the British Head of State will have visited the Irish Republic in our independent history.  This is the culmination of a peace process that has transformed Ireland and our relationship with our nearest neighbours in Britain and I feel privileged to have played my part in that. 

 

It seems clear to me that having done so there is an opportunity – and perhaps a responsibility – in terms of the lessons of the Irish situation that might have implications for other conflict situations, like your own, and I would like briefly to explore some of these with you here.

 

I should stress that, of course, no two conflict situations are the same and each has its own unique character and features.  I do believe, however, that there are some elements of our situation in Ireland which might be drawn on in developing conflict resolution processes here in the Basque Country and it is on these I will focus now.

 

Firstly, I believe that there has to be a broad acceptance by the parties involved in the conflict that the status quo is untenable and that some form of agreement is better in terms of everybody’s interests. 

 

In this respect, I believe and I sincerely hope that ETA have finally at long last arrived at that point but the proof will now be in their actions.  To prove they are serious about peace, they must maintain their ceasefire irrespective of whether they see their objectives progressing or not.  A stop-start approach to ceasefires is not acceptable and will do nothing to build trust.  Only when they have demonstrated that they have completely moved beyond violence can reconciliation commence.

 

A key lesson also is the need to be as inclusive and comprehensive as possible in terms of the parties to the negotiations.  I do accept that it is a sensitive issue in terms of who sovereign or provincial Governments sit down and negotiate with.  There cannot be a sense that it is possible to bomb one’s way to the negotiating table.  And certainly in our case we insisted that no party currently involved in violence, directly or indirectly, could be part of the process.  So our inclusivity was not unconditional.  This was not just a basic moral principle, but also a matter of practical politics, in terms of the participation of others.

 

Yet, on the other hand, if those who are involved in the conflict are not party to the negotiations, they will not feel themselves bound by the outcome.  Moreover, as Yitzak Rabin said, you make peace with your enemies not your friends.  In our case, Tony Blair and I opted for an inclusive approach that had the majority of parties, including those associated with paramilitary groups, around the table.  It was complex, it was difficult, but in our context and situation, it proved the right decision.  I feel it is a key decision but one that can only be taken by those closely involved in terms of each negotiation situation. 

 

But I do want to emphasise a key lesson I learned in my career was that dialogue was the only way forward if profound differences, such as those which existed in Northern Ireland, were to be managed and resolved.  Today, I do want to stress my belief in ongoing dialogue as the best way which peace can be built.  You cannot persuade people to stop using violence if you won’t communicate with them.  Nor should vacuums be allowed to develop in a peace process because those most committed to violence will invariably try and fill them.  At once people are committed to not using violence, the door cannot be bolted on them becoming involved in democratic politics.  After a long conflict, it is important that paramilitary groups are given an exit-strategy and are shown that if they lay down their arms, they can engage in the democratic process.  To do otherwise is only to prolong the conflict.  A ceasefire that is genuine and which holds has to lead to dialogue. 

 

A further lesson is comprehensiveness in terms of issues incorporated in the negotiations.  Again, this is complex.  A smaller amount of issues is easier to handle.  But dealing with as many of the issues as possible – and it has to be left to each party to decide what is important to them – is critical to the likelihood of agreement sticking.

 

The decommissioning of weapons was one of the most complex issues in the process in Northern Ireland.  The initial demands, especially from the Unionist and British sides, were that all weapons had to be handed over before talks could commence.  If that demand had been stuck to, I am not sure we would have ever got anywhere in Ireland.  In the end, decommissioning was linked to progress in the talks and international inspection verified that paramilitary weapons had been put beyond use. 

 

I know that the Spanish Minister for the Interior recently rejected a process modelled on the IRA process of decommissioning when he said “In a democratic state, verification is done by the State security forces.”  I don’t want to comment on the situation as this relates to Spain or the Basque Country but what I will say is that IRA decommissioning would never have taken place if it involved the IRA handing over their guns to the British Government.  This to them would have been viewed as an act of surrender.  For a peace process to work, there has to be a change in mindsets and it is important that people are not boxed into a corner where it looks like they are abandoning their principles.  If this happens, reconciliation won’t follow.  At the end of the day, a successful peace process can only come about if all parties to the agreement feel they have had some wins.  There has to be given and take.  If the agreement is not a true agreement but a serious of government diktats, peace will not hold.

 

A further key requirement – and this is a personal one – is to seek to put yourself in the shoes of the other person in the negotiations.  For the most part, parties involved in conflict do not know each other well personally.  That means that at the outset, there is a lack of knowledge about where the other side is really coming from.  In our case, for instance, Irish Governments over the decades had very little contact with Unionist politicians in the North.  So when I found myself having to deal with the Ulster Unionist Leader, David Trimble, I was meeting a man I did not really know.  It was important that I try to put myself in his position and get an understanding in real terms of what he needed to achieve.  Over time, I did get to know David Trimble and I came to have a real respect for him – just as I did subsequently for his successor Dr Ian Paisley, who for many years was a hate-figure with many in the Irish Republic, but is now a very good friend of mine.

 

In other words, it is important that participants in negotiations treat each other as human beings.  That may sound simplistic – but it is profoundly important.  That is how some degree of trust is built and without a degree of trust, success is impossible.

 

The involvement of external players is a key question.  In our case, there is no doubt that the contribution of the EU and the United States was crucial.  I will never forget the telephone marathon undertaken by President Bill Clinton on the night and morning of 9/10 April 1998, as we edged our way towards agreement in Castle Buildings.  Bill Clinton played a crucial role in persuading former enemies to take a shared journey towards peace.  Bill Clinton gave huge time, energy and political priority to the Irish peace process.  No American President had ever engaged so actively with the problems of Ireland as Bill Clinton.  For that, I will always be grateful. 

 

The role of Talks Chair, former United States Senator George Mitchell, was also immense.  His wisdom, humour, patience, tact and decisiveness were indispensable.  The American involvement in our peace process came from the involvement of the huge number of Irish people and people of Irish extraction who live in the United States of America but retain a great affection for the well-being of their homeland. 

 

Our diaspora were a key-building block in our peace process.  I know there are many Basque people living elsewhere in the world and you have significant immigrant populations in Venezuela, Argentina, Mexico, Uruguay, Chile and the United States.  I believe your diaspora can make a contribution by encouraging the Governments in the countries they are living to support a peace strategy for the Basque Country and also by bringing an outside perspective to the problems at the root of this conflict.

 

Looking back on it, I can see that the outside players broke up the energy of those directly involved – brought a slightly distanced perspective – and, of course, could say things to all sides that we could not say to each other.

 

There is another point in terms of an external involvement.  The reality of today’s world is that every thing and every issue is increasingly inter-connected globally.  In the closing year of my time as Taoiseach, I had the great honour to make addresses to the Houses of Parliament in London and to the Joint Houses of the United States Congress in Washington DC.  The reason I was given such a wonderful opportunity was the same in both cases – a recognition that the creation of peace in Ireland had important implications that went beyond our own shores.  So it is not just a question of an external dimension being valuable to the success of the negotiating process in a particular conflict, but that the wider world has something to gain from success in that process also.

 

It is encouraging that groups in the Basque Country are looking to the wider world for help in removing the causes of this conflict.  I know that Fr Alec Reid, who did so much to bring about the first IRA ceasefire, has spent a lot of time in the Basque Country working for peace.  I also want to commend the work of Brian Currin, the South African lawyer and peace activist, and other international mediators, who drew up the Brussels declaration calling on ETA to make their ceasefire permanent and for the Spanish Government to give an “appropriate” response.  This declaration has been signed by Nelson Mandela and Mary Robinson, the former UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, who was actually the President of Ireland who gave me my seal of office for the first time as Irish Prime Minister.   

 

Another key lesson for peace to work is try to leave history at home!  Now in a case like Ireland’s, that is a difficult prescription!  We have many centuries to draw from.  An inexhaustible locker, George Mitchell called it!  But the difficulty is that one person’s history is another person’s triumph or grievance.  In these sensitive situations, there is no one definition of the same historical event.  Much time and energy are wasted in debate – and, of course, tensions and temperatures rise.  Conditions not conducive to securing agreement.  I am not advocating that we set history aside.  We must be sensitive to it, but yet seek to rise beyond it in a wider interest.  In reality, any agreement is ultimately going to require some cold-eyed pragmatism and practical common sense. 

 

Then there are requirements such as sheer determination, patience, positive attitude, never giving up!  These are crucial.  Without those qualities on the part of the participants, no conflict resolution process can succeed.  For my part, as I said, I decided that I was going to give the process whatever it took.  There were many occasions during the long process when all of us involved had to dig deep personally in order to keep going.  That week was certainly one for me in a very particular way. 

 

A particularly important lesson from our process in my view is the need to find a way to secure the validation of the people for the outcome negotiated.  Of course, the Governments and parties involved in the negotiations have a strong representative mandate, there is a profound additional dimension to be added when the outcome also achieves the validation of the people as a whole.  That is why we felt it important to include the provision in the Good Friday Agreement that its terms had to be put in simultaneous referenda North and South.  The passing of the referenda North and South by large majorities on 22 May 1998 was a deeply significant development.  From that moment, the Good Friday Agreement was no longer just a creature of the Governments and the parties but, as I said, the settled will of the people of Ireland.

 

In the event, that there is a final negotiated settlement on the issues of contention regarding the Basque Country, I believe you should give some consideration to putting the agreement to all the people here to ratify in a referendum.  One of the big issues of contention in this conflict arises from the fact that the vote on 1978 constitution was boycotted in huge numbers by Basque voters.  I read that abstentions were as high as 55% and this raised questions about the legitimacy of this constitution in the Basque Country.  This is the type of uncertainty from which conflict breeds.  That is why I believe there may be some sense in putting any new peace agreement before the people.  The reason for this is if such an agreement should be passed by an inclusive democratic vote, it would give it undisputed legitimacy and make it impossible for any armed group to claim a mandate or say it is the will of the people to oppose it.

 

 A further lesson is to put in place structures and institutions which will enable people to work together afterwards on practical matters such as economic development, education, healthcare and so on.  Apart from being necessary in their own right for the development of society, the very fact of having to operate together on such practical issues has a huge value in terms of building confidence and trust between people who had previously been enemies.  Certainly in our situation, the new institutions established under the Good Friday Agreement have proved extremely valuable in that regard.  

 

My own experiences have taught me that the issue of prisoners is crucial to the establishment of peace.  It is an emotive issue.  I’ve met the victims of IRA and Loyalist Paramilitary attacks.  And I know how difficult they found it to see people convicted of violence released early from jail but this was an essential part of the Good Friday Agreement in terms of building trust and a fresh beginning.  I am not going to pre-empt any process that may occur here but I will say that the Irish experience was that the paramilitary organisations were not going abandon their colleagues in jail and that a deal on prisoners was necessary to secure an overall peace package.  That was the Irish experience.  I should also make the point that, in many cases, those prisoners, who had spent time inside and were released on licence under the terms of the Good Friday Agreement, became strong voices for peace within their communities.  They had fought “the war” and spent time in prison as a result and they were determined not to let the conflict resume so they too became a voice for peace.

 

Reflecting back, I would also suggest that huge store be placed on the process of implementation of any agreement reached in peace talks.  Good Friday 1998 constituted a critical moment in terms of closure of the past for us in Ireland.  But at another level, it was very much a beginning also.  And beginnings in any project in life can be fragile experiences.  Much nurturing and careful tending are needed.  A key lesson of our process, therefore, is undoubtedly then the need to think closely about how agreement is to be implemented and carried out. 

 

In drawing to a close, I want to stress again what a deep honour and privilege it has been for me personally to have had the opportunity to make a contribution to the making of peace in my country.  It is something that will remain with me all of my own days.  If I have one abiding impression, it will be about the people, about the relationships formed and about the friendships made.  And unquestionably the making of peace was a vast team effort, involving the contribution of so many, each of which was vital to success. 

 

A further, although sadder, abiding thought will be for the victims of the Troubles – those people for whom the new beginning of the Good Friday Agreement came too late.  And also for those maimed and injured – who will carry for the rest of their lives the scars, whether physical or mental, of a terrible time in our history.  My deepest hope is that it will be a consolation to all of them that hopefully no family will have to go through in the future what they endured in the past.  The conflict here has caused no less pain for families of the victims than of those in Ireland.  Their have been some appalling murders carried out by ETA which have damaged the reputation of the Basque Country and delayed a lasting reconciliation.  These killings, like all killings, are wrong.  It should also be said that the GAL era, in particular, does Spanish democracy no credit.  State terrorism is abhorrent and the reputation of Felipe Gonzalez’s government has been rightly tarnished by what went on.

 

For the future, the best tribute we can pay to the dead is peace.   The Good Friday Agreement which I was so proud to negotiate says it well and I quote:

 

“The tragedies of the past have left a deep and profoundly regrettable legacy of suffering.  We must never forget those who have died or been injured.  But we can best honour them through a fresh start, in which we firmly dedicate ourselves to the achievement of reconciliation, tolerance and mutual trust, and to the protection and vindication of the human rights of all.”

 

Taken overall, I am very hopeful for that future in my country.  Like the Basque Country, Ireland is a beautiful land of mountain, valley, sea, city and town.  Perhaps now at last, in this generation and in all the generations to come, it will be possible for both our peoples, at peace at last – and at peace with our nearest neighbours – to savour to the full the wonders of our respective nations. 

 

Finally, I would urge you, if you have not been to Ireland, to come and see it yourself.  I will certainly be encouraging friends and family at home to come and see the splendid Basque Country. 

 

Thank you very much for your courtesy and your attention.

 

I would be happy to take any questions you may have.

 

 

 

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