Gerry Adams: Eta can make peace – but they should heed the Irish lesson
[Gerry Adams is the president of Sinn Fein.]
Many in the Basque country have taken a close interest in the peace process in Ireland. They hope to learn from the Irish experience in an effort to advance their own peace process.
In my view, a failure to grab opportunities and to build on initiatives led to the Irish peace process taking much longer to make progress than it should have. At times, arguments over words and their interpretation were elevated to pre-conditions which in some instances almost led to the destruction of the process. This should be avoided in the Basque situation.
Yesterday's statement follows Eta's announcement on 5 September that it had taken a decision to halt "offensive military action". On that occasion Eta said that it was time to build a democratic framework for the Basque country.
These developments did not happen by chance. They came at the end of a long process of internal strategising among Basque parties, trade unionists and political activists...
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Many in the Basque country have taken a close interest in the peace process in Ireland. They hope to learn from the Irish experience in an effort to advance their own peace process.
In my view, a failure to grab opportunities and to build on initiatives led to the Irish peace process taking much longer to make progress than it should have. At times, arguments over words and their interpretation were elevated to pre-conditions which in some instances almost led to the destruction of the process. This should be avoided in the Basque situation.
Yesterday's statement follows Eta's announcement on 5 September that it had taken a decision to halt "offensive military action". On that occasion Eta said that it was time to build a democratic framework for the Basque country.
These developments did not happen by chance. They came at the end of a long process of internal strategising among Basque parties, trade unionists and political activists...