Political leaders reflect on lessons learnt from Good Friday Agreement talks, 25 years on
The two former premiers of the UK and Ireland have hailed the bravery of the political leaders of 1998 for the achievement of the Good Friday Agreement.
Those involved in the talks have been reflecting on the high pressure talks that helped deliver peace in Northern Ireland.
April 10 marks the 25th anniversary of the historic peace accord which helped bring an end to the violence and bloodshed from the previous three decades.
"It took a lot of politicians doing what politicians should always do which is lead and not just play to the gallery," former Prime Minister Sir Tony Blair said.
"The political leaders at the time, people like David Trimble for example, sadly now deceased, they were brave to do what they did, the Sinn Féin people were brave to do what they did, the nationalists," said the former Labour leader.
The Good Friday Agreement was co-signed by the British and Irish governments with the Taoiseach of the time, Bertie Ahern representing the Republic in the talks.
Ahern also credited the bravery of both unionist and nationalist leaders but said he does have certain regrets surrounding what was agreed.
"Decommissioning - if I had that over again, I think we should've nailed that down far better because it caused so many problems for five years - I spent five years of my life trying to deal with that issue," Mr Ahern told UTV.
Whilst political leaders have been looking back on what was agreed in 1998, attention has inevitably turned to what lessons from the negotiations can be brought to the current Stormont stalemate.
"Nationalist and unionist sections of our community both have to have their hands on the steering wheel of this place," said Sir Reg Empey, who was part of the UUP negotiation team.
"Now that's not easy, it's not majority rule - we've gone away from that, we're not going back there and qualified voting and all boils down to majority rule at the end of the day and I think that would take us in the wrong direction," he told UTV.
"It created a space which allowed all of us to come forward on the basis of our own sense of legitimacy, our own sense of perspective and that's what we need to remind ourselves of again that the agreement was actually about mutual respect and partnership," said Mark Durkan, the former SDLP leader and deputy First Minister.
"We need to move beyond the spirit of attrition that seems to be creeping into politics again now," he added.
For David Ford of the Alliance Party, that sense of attrition is also a problem.
"The fundamental principles were right to get that partnership approach with two sets of links - what we need to ensure we do is have mechanisms which allow that to work and not just have one party stopping it work," he said.
The current DUP leader Sir Jeffrey Donaldson was also involved in the talks in 1998 as a member of the UUP - however, he walked out of the negotiations.
"I've learned lessons from that period and that's why when you fast forward 25 years later to the situation that we're in today, I'm determined that we get things right and if that means taking a little longer to press for more, I think perhaps the Ulster Unionist Party would have come out of all of this in better shape," he told UTV.
Sir Jeffrey Donaldson's comments come months after a LucidTalk poll showed that the Good Friday Agreement no longer has the support of most unionists.
However, the former Sinn Féin president Gerry Adams dismissed the apparent lack of support.
"There is nobody that I know, no sane person would ever want to go back to what we have come out of," Mr Adams told UTV.
Asked whether the lack of unionist support for the Good Friday Agreement coupled with Sinn Féin's recent strong polling could lead to a united Ireland, Mr Adams said it was a "doable project".
"I would like to think that it would happen in my lifetime, depending on how long I'm blessed with a life but it's now doable," he said.
On the position of reviewing Northern Ireland's constitutional position, Sir Tony Blair said you can only begin to consider reviewing it, if everyone is onboard for reviewing it.
"Despite all the challenges, there are a lot of challenges, social challenges, economic challenges as well as political challenges in Northern Ireland.
"Northern Ireland's a better place but it only became that because we made the agreement and it will only stay that we if we keep the agreement."
"People who have simple alternatives that this direct rule will operate - direct rule is over and those days are gone," said Mr Ahern.
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