Letter: Illusion in Ulster

Thursday 18 November 1999 00:02 GMT

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Letter:

Illusion in Ulster

Sir: It is a truth universally acknowledged, except by the Ulster Unionist Party, that undefeated armies do not surrender their weapons.

If David Trimble now has to eat his words and accept that sharing power with Sinn Fein must precede any IRA decommissioning, which in any case can only be voluntary and is unlikely to be more than token, he has only himself to blame.

It was a disastrous failure of leadership for the last 17 months to collude with his party's absurd collective illusion that it could unilaterally amend the Good Friday Agreement and compel the IRA to decommission before devolution occurred.

MICHAEL McCARTHY

London W5

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