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25 May 2000 Edition

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Dúirt siad...

You asked me to assure Jeffrey Donaldson? If it was possible for me to get the IRA to surrender, to march heads bowed without clothing to Glengall Street, putting behind them containers of IRA weapons, which we then get naked IRA Volunteers to break with their own heads, having shot each other and then disbanded... Mr Donaldson would perhaps be looking for some other assurance.

Gerry Adams last week on unionist decommissioning demands

 


The outcome's a disgrace. It shows how badly the system works. This is the one remaining thing we thought the system would act on. The system has failed us again.

Solicitor Padraigín Drinan on the decision not to take disciplinary action against RUC officers who threatened Rosemary Nelson before her death

 


We are holding our hands up. There was no excuse for this and the significance will not be lost on us.

PUP leader David Ervine on the discovery of UVF weapons at one of his party's offices in Ballymoney last week

 


Despite this, equality also has to be a central tenet of this process. It has to be its outcome. But some unionists feel threatened even by the concept or the idea of equality. This is one of the gaps that has to be bridged, because when unionist leaders realise that equality is in unionist interests also, then this process will click.

Gerry Adams writing in last Friday's Irish News

 


If Sinn Féin goes into government, then we would object to the unionists insisting that Martin McGuinness has to be presided over by the Union Jack. He is a republican and he is trying to achieve by peaceful means a united Ireland and his flag is the Tricolour.

Sinn Féin chair Mitchel McLaughlin on the flying of the Union flag over any future government at Stormont

 


There is a sense of amnesia out there over victims of state violence. Some people don't want to recognise the hurt caused by the British Army and the RUC.

Gerry Adams speaking at a comemmoration for plastic-bullet victim Carol Ann Kelly

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