Protestant leader Ian Paisley comments after Blair talks

Описание: (7 Dec 2004) SHOTLIST

1. Reverend Ian Paisley, Northern Ireland's Democratic Unionist leader, gets out of car and enters 10 Downing Street, residence of British Prime Minister Tony Blair
2. Windows
3. Paisley leaves 10 Downing Street and approaches media
4. SOUNDBITE (English) Reverend Ian Paisley, Democratic Unionist leader, Northern Ireland's hard-line Protestant party
"Well, they need to surrender their weapons. There's nothing wrong with asking a terrorist to surrender his weapon, and there's nothing wrong with a person who has been guilty of organising mass murders through their country and trying to commit genocide of the whole Protestant population at the border, to say 'Give it up' (Question: But it's the photographic record that seems the point.) Yes, well, I mean if you sin publicly, you have to repent publicly."
5. Windows
6. SOUNDBITE (English) Reverend Ian Paisley, Democratic Unionist leader, Northern Ireland's hard-line Protestant party
"Northern Ireland has to be free from the scourge of terrorism, and I want to see it free from that. Whether a man is a Roman Catholic, a Protestant, or a Jew, or whatever else, he's a right to live in a country where there's no terrorism, and that's where we are and we must stand by that. There is no giving in, and that is a principle that I will never surrender. (Question: Do you think this is the best opportunity?) It is the best. We were never as near to a settlement, the people are with us, there's movement that way, Roman Catholic people... I had a priest who sent me a personal message and he says, 'When I think of how in my area the IRA rode roughshod over my parishioners'. He's says, 'Ian keep up your work and stand to your guns'. (Question: And you don't think that chance is slipping now?) No, I don't. I think that the time to take it is when the tide is running. There's a tide in the affairs of man taken at a flood, and I think the tide is running in people's minds and hearts and consciences this way."
7. Policeman
8. Paisley walking away

STORYLINE

The Irish Republican Army (IRA) must have its disarmament photographed for publication, Northern Ireland's hard-line Protestant leader declared on Monday after another negotiating session with British Prime Minister Tony Blair in London.

"If you sin publicly, you have to repent publicly," said the Rev. Ian Paisley, emphasising that the IRA must not conduct its disarmament activities in secret, as has happened three times previously in Northern Ireland's decade-old peace process.

Speaking outside Blair's Downing Street office after hour-long talks, the 78-year-old Paisley said he wasn't going to back any new peace deal unless it contained the IRA's full disarmament and disbandment.

Blair, who has spent seven years pursuing a lasting settlement for Northern Ireland, had been seeking firm approval from Paisley for a proposed new peace package.

The deal, backed by Irish Prime Minister Bertie Ahern, would require the IRA to disarm fully and Paisley to forge a new coalition with Sinn Fein, the
IRA-linked party. Blair and Ahern tentatively planned to publish their blueprint for agreement later this week in Belfast.

The plan requires support from both Sinn Fein, which is backed by most Catholics, and by the Democratic Unionists led by firebrand Paisley, who has spent the past four decades seeking to thwart compromise in Northern Ireland.

Paisley, whose party represents a number of the province's British Protestant majority, stressed he wasn't willing to say "yes" or "no" to anything
until the IRA ceases to be a threat to Northern Ireland's stability.






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