Loyalists, Republicans in Iraq Talks

Irish Voice News

Loyalists, Republicans in Iraq Talks

September 6, 2007

By Barry McCaffrey

FORMER Loyalist and Republican paramilitaries who were once attempting to assassinate each other in Ireland held secret discussions with Shia and Sunni leaders in Finland last weekend in a bid to end the ongoing sectarian violence in Iraq.

The discussions, held in Finland, were organized by former Finnish President Martti Ahtisaari and the John W. McCormack Graduate School of Policy Studies at the University of Massachusetts in Boston, under the auspices of the Crisis Management Initiative (CMI) reconciliation group.

The Iraqi groups heard from former IRA leader and now Northern Ireland’s Deputy First Minister Martin McGuinness and former Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) prisoner turned Loyalist politician Billy Hutchinson.

The Northern Ireland politicians met with around 30 representatives from Iraq’s Shia and Sunni communities to share their experiences about how violence in the North was finally brought to an end.

Among those present at the talks were representatives of the radical Shia cleric Moqtada al-Sadr; the leader of the largest Sunni Arab political group, Adnan al-Dulaimi; and Humam Hammoudi, the Shia chairman of the Iraqi parliament’s foreign affairs committee.

Following four days of intensive discussions the Shias and Sunnis have agreed on a set of principles, known as the Helsinki agreement.

The agreement is believed to be based on the same set of principles brokered by former US Senator George Mitchell in Northern Ireland in 1998, which led to the signing of the Good Friday Agreement.

The 12 point plan commits both sides to abide by principles of non-violence and democracy, as well as an agreement to consider the possible creation of a disarmament commission and the formation of a body to deal with the legacy of Iraq’s past.

The Helsinki agreement is also understood to call for an end to international and regional interference in Iraq’s affairs, a key demand from both Sunni and Shia delegations.

Similar agreements played a key role in the Northern Ireland and South African peace processes in the 1990s.

Former ANC leader Mac Maharaj and former South African government minister Roelf Meyer also took part in the weekend talks.

McGuinness said that key lessons could be learned from the Irish, South African and Iraqi peace processes. He described the Sunni and Shia leaders as key powerbrokers with enormous influence in their respective communities.

McGuinness said he hoped the delegates would bring a message back to Iraq that power-sharing and inclusive government was the only way forward.

“The important lesson to learn is that if people are serious about bringing about peace in their country, that can only be done through an inclusive negotiating process,” he said.

Former Loyalist politician Hutchinson insisted that only the Sunni and Shia communities could bring lasting peace to Iraq.

“We were invited to share our experiences,” he said. “We weren’t telling these people what to.

“We told them the difficulties which we had faced in our peace process and how the difficulties were finally overcome. At the end of the day it will be up to the people in Iraq to work out if they can find peace.”

Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) Assembly member Jeffrey Donaldson, who also took part in the Finnish talks, insisted that the discussions had not been organized at the behest of either the American or British governments.

“The Iraqis themselves were anxious that they should do this, that they should get help from South Africa and Northern Ireland and that there should be no involvement from the coalition governments,” he said.

“There has been very useful discussion. Agreement has been reached on the way forward between the parties and they are now going back to Iraq with these proposals.

“The agreement will be published this evening (Tuesday) and it incorporates within it the George Mitchell principles of democracy and non-violence which have been lifted from the Northern Ireland process.”

The Iraqi talks are just the latest in a series of discussions in which Northern Irish politicians and former paramilitaries have shared their experiences with other international groups seeking to come out of conflict situations.

Throughout the 1990s there was a close relationship between the Irish and South African peace processes under the leadership of Nelson Mandela and former apartheid president William de Klerk.

Unionist and Republican politicians, who at the time were unwilling to appear in public together in Northern Ireland, regularly traveled to South Africa for face-to-face talks.

Senior Republican and Loyalist leaders such as Gerry Adams and Hutchinson have regularly taken part in talks between Basque separatists and the Spanish authorities.

In July last year McGuinness traveled to Sri Lanka for talks with the rebel Tamal Tigers and government officials over nearly 40 years of conflict in the south Asian state.

Two months later Adams traveled to Palestine at the invitation of President Mahmoud Abbas for talks with the Hamas government. The Israeli government refused to meet with the Sinn Fein leader during the visit.

Just weeks before his death former Progressive Unionist Party leader Davy Ervine traveled with Catholic priest Father Alec Reid to Colombia for separate talks with government officials and guerrilla leaders.

Throughout the 1990s Unionist and Nationalist politicians regularly traveled to the United States for talks with the former Bush and Clinton administrations.

However, Hutchinson says that it is ironic that he now finds himself being applauded for his efforts to share his peace-building experiences with former combatants around the world, but because of having served a jail sentence in Northern Ireland during the Troubles, has been banned from entering the U.S. since

September 11, 2001.

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