[ Noise ]

>> Good afternoon everybody.

Welcome. I'm Susan Collins, the Joan and Sanford
Weill Dean here at the Gerald R. Ford School

of Public Policy and I'm delighted to welcome
you for the Rosenthal Lecture on behalf

of the entire Ford School community.

I'd like to start by telling you a little
bit about the origin of this lecture series.

Josh Rosenthal was a 1979 graduate
of the University of Michigan.

He went on to earn a master's degree in
Public Policy from Princeton University,

and his deep interest in policy analysis
and international affairs led him to work

in the field of International Finance.

He was working at the World Trade Center Towers

on September 11, 2001 and
he died in the attacks.

Down the hallway, you can find
a wonderful picture of Josh.

He was a Michigan undergraduate at that
time and he won some sort of a Civics Award

from a competition that allowed him to meet
former President Gerald Ford here on campus

and he's shaking hands with President
Ford and it's a picture filled

with optimism and filled with potential.

After Josh's death, his mother Marilynn
Rosenthal, a long-time faculty member

at the University of Michigan, sought a way to
create a positive meaning from what happened

on 9/11 to help fulfill her son's early
optimism about the world and his role,

the role that mutual understanding,
dialogue, and analysis might play in helping

to improve relationships within
communities here and around the world.

Marilynn and others worked together to
establish the Josh Rosenthal Education Fund

which has enabled the Ford School to
bring leading public policy figures

to Ann Arbor each September to share
their insights all through dialogue

and generate a greater understanding
about the causes and consequences of 9/11

and we're very grateful for their support.

Marilynn died in 2007 but I know that
she would have been extremely pleased

to welcome this year's Rosenthal Lecture
to the Ford School, Lord John Alderdice.

Lord Alderdice was appointed a light
member of the British House of Lords

of the British Parliament Westminster.

He's also a psychiatrist and a
psychotherapist at the Center for Psychotherapy

which he established in Belfast
in the United Kingdom.

Already a practicing psychiatrist, he became
very active in Northern Ireland Politics

in his early 20s joining a political party
that included both Protestants and Catholics

and later he was elected to lead that party
through more than a decade of negotiations

between the various unionists
and nationalist stake holders.

With the signing of the historic Good Friday
Peace Agreement in April of 1998, Lord Alderdice

and his colleagues achieve what one seemed
impossible an end to over eight centuries

of conflict including 30 years of active
violence and bloodshed in Northern Ireland.

In recognition of their work, Lord
Alderdice, seven other political leaders,

and US Senator George Mitchell were given
the John F Kennedy Profile in Courage Award.

In presenting the award, Senator Ted Kennedy
said of the leaders, "They committed themselves

to finding the needle of peace in the
haystack of violence and they found it."

Since then, Lord Alderdice had gone
on to apply his experiences at home

to seemingly intractable conflicts
in other parts of the world

and particularly in the Middle East.

We could not be more pleased and honored
to welcome Lord John Alderdice to Ann Arbor

and to the Ford School and now please
help me welcome him to the podium.

[ Applause ]

>> Thank you very much indeed Dean Susan.

It's a very great pleasure
for me to be here with you.

This past weekend saw the 9th
anniversary of the death of Josh Rosenthal

and so many others on the
11th of September 2001.

On the 11th of November this year in Northern
Ireland, we will remember the 27th anniversary

of the Remembrance Day Bombing where the
IRA blew up a crowd of worshippers who were

at the cenotaph in the town of Enniskillen,
remembering those who died in two World Wars.

Among the twelve people who died that
day was a young nurse, Marie Wilson.

She was standing beside her father Gordon.

He survived and in a subsequent
interview with the BBC he described

with anguish his last conversation
with his daughter Marie lying

in the rubble and holding his hand.

"She held my hand tightly" he said,
"and gripped me as hard as she could.

She said, "Daddy, I love you very much".

Those were her exact words to me, and those
were the last words I ever heard her say.

To the astonishment of listeners, Gordon
Wilson went on to add, "But I bear no ill will,

I bear no grudge, dirty sort of talk
is not going to bring her back to life.

She was a great wee lassie.

She loved her profession.

She was a pet.

She's dead.

She's in heaven and we shall meet again.

And I will pray for these
men tonight and every night."

As the Ulster historian Jonathan Bardon
recounts, "No words in more than 25 years

of violence in Northern Ireland had
such a powerful, emotional impact."

Gordon Wilson went on to become an
Irish Senator, a warrior for peace,

and a shining light in the midst of
the horror of some of our darkest days.

I never cease to be amazed by the way in which
some victims and their families can find a way

of creating something good out of the evil
that has brought them awful grief and injury.

And I want to not only remember Josh Rosenthal,

that bright young man whose
life was cut tragically short

and in whose memory we meet today,
but also to pay tribute to his mother,

Marilynn Rosenthal who, like Gordon
Wilson, found from some extraordinary depth

in herself a way of surviving in her
terrible grief and not only remembering Josh

but helping others search for a better way

of conducting our human relationships
in this troubled world.

I very much appreciate the honor that Dean
Susan Collins has done me by inviting me

to deliver this annual Josh Rosenthal Lecture.

And I want to thank her very
much for her invitation

and her generous welcome and hospitality.

She and her staff have been most kind.

However, her invitation to explore in this
presentation the possibility that our experience

in Ireland might have some lessons for other
communities in conflict not least the tragedy

of the Middle East, is a real challenge
not only because of the caliber

of my illustrious predecessors
in this series of lectures,

but also because I am always a little
careful about the thought that we

in Northern Ireland have lessons for
anyone else, particularly our Israeli

and Palestinian brothers and sisters
whose problems are so complex and diverse

and whose strategic significance
is much greater than ours.

Winston Churchill once unkindly
said that he love the Americans

because they always did the right thing but only

after they had exhausted
all the other possibilities.

[Laughter] Whether this is
true of Americans or not,

it is certainly the case with us in Ireland.

We have made progress, but it is only
because we have learnt and continue--

continually painfully learned the lessons
both from our own tragic mistakes as well

as from the experiences of others.

It has taken us hundreds of
years of suffering to come

to a new way of dealing with our problems.

We are nevertheless happy to share our
experiences in the hope that they may be

of interest and perhaps even
of help to some others.

I also do it out of a sense of heart-felt
sympathy for peoples caught up in a cycle

of violence from which there seems no escape.

I and my fellow countrymen and women
understand something of how that feels.

During some very dark times we received help,
encouragement, and inspiration from others

who had trod the path ahead
of us in South Africa,

and even in the Middle East itself during
the hopeful times of the Oslo Process.

So we owe it to others to contribute what we can
by way of encouragement to them in their times

of difficulty and as I detect at present,
some despair even as yet another round

of Middle East Peace Talks have
begun this month in Washington DC.

At the start I also want to acknowledge someone
else who I've been privileged to come to know

in recent years as a friend and a colleague
in working for peace in the Middle East.

Professor Bob Axelrod from the
university here has made some remarkable

and widely recognized contributions in
political science and public policy.

And working with him has helped and encouraged
me as we've struggled not only to understand

but to find ways to intervene
constructively in that very fraught situation

and I appreciate that very much Bob.

When Nelson Mandela decided
to try to help us in Ireland,

he and his colleagues did not
give us any instruction or advice.

They brought us to South Africa
and simply told us their story.

Following that example I will concentrate
for much of my time on telling you something

of the story of our little
offshore part of Europe.

But as I do so, please keep in your mind the
problems faced by Israelis and Palestinians

in the crucible of the Middle East.

In Europe, the focus of the last two
decades on expansion, integration

and constitutional amendment
treaties and the current preoccupation

with the economic crisis can obscure
the fact that for the architects

of the European Union the driving
force was not primarily about how

to build a diplomatic country balance to the
United States nor even a powerful commitment

to economic liberalism and the development
in Europe of a free market for its own sake,

but rather a reaction to the horrors of war

and the determination never
to fall into that abyss again

Do not forget that my generation is
the first in the history of Europe not

to have experienced a major
war at least in Western Europe.

The unprecedented destruction of two World Wars
demonstrated that the traditional rivalries

of nationalism and imperialism
were now just too dangerous.

And scientific advance had in
addition created the prospect

of even more catastrophic wars in the future.

60 years on, the building of an ever
collusive European Union has made war

between historic rivals like Britain,
Germany, and France unthinkable.

And the success of this process also manifests
itself in the way we have understood and tried

to resolve the long-standing but much
smaller scale conflict in Ireland.

Now, trouble in Ireland is no new thing.

The greatest battle ever fought on Irish
soil was the Battle of Moira in 637 AD.

It went on for seven full days.

Congul of Ulster fought with Domnall of Meath

and brought his friends over
from Scotland to help him.

Mythology takes us even further back
into the mists of Irish history.

The great hero Cu Chulainn , the Hound of
Ulster, is said to have died defending Ulster

from Queen Maeve and the
men of the rest of Ireland.

So long before the United States, long before
the Reformation brought its religious divisions,

even before England was England,
the Northern Irish were fighting

with the rest of the people of the island.

And less you think this is mere ancient myth or
history, you need to understand that in places

where there is conflict, time is telescoped.

The past is not really completely the past and
people will talk in Ireland of what happened

in 1969 as though it was
yesterday and of 1916, 1690,

or 1641 as though it was
just a month or two ago.

Disputes over religion, invasion, plantation,
displacement and discrimination are all layered

on top of each other and none
is of itself the cause alone.

There is a long history and
tradition of fighting and the signs

of that culture of conflict are all around.

The name of the city of Derry or Londonderry
is disputed because its name was changed

to take note that the Guilds of the City of
London financed the plantation of Ulster.

For Catholics, it represents
occupation and defeat, for Protestants,

the link with Britain and
victory in a historic siege.

When I spoke at the Mansion House sometime
ago, the Lord Mayor of London inquired

of me how things were with the
Honorable the Irish Society which was set

up in Derry/Londonderry hundreds of years ago to
manage the affairs in the area and still exists

as a charitable body on which each
succeeding Lord Mayor of London has a seat.

Almost every cultural image embodies
divisions of loyalty and a history of conflict.

For the whole of our long history there
have been regular rebellions including

of course those that are well known like the
1798 Rebellion, inspired I may remind you

by the American and subsequently
the French Revolutions.

200 years later, events in America again
played their part when the civil rights marches

of the 1960s inspired similar
protests in Northern Ireland.

When these civil rights marches in 1967 and
1968 broke down into serious urban unrest.

The first reaction of the government
was to deal with the problem

as a matter of internal security.

It's worth noting that nationalist leaders

at the time demanded British
rights for British citizens.

However, it soon became obvious that while
the trouble was triggered by dissatisfaction

about current discriminatory measures
affecting the catholic nationalist community

within Northern Ireland, the context was
the still unresolved historic problems

of relationships between and
within Britain and Ireland.

Britain had hoped in vain that it had laid
the matter to rest by the 1922 settlement

that partitioned Ireland, since which it had
in practice treated Northern Ireland largely

as a self-governing dominion,
though still within the UK.

The Southern Irish state meanwhile
emphasized and developed its independence

by leaving the British Commonwealth,
becoming a Republic,

remaining neutral during the Second World War
and refusing to join the NATO military alliance.

During the period from 1923 and 1968, there
was only relatively sporadic terrorist activity

and much could have been done to address the
needs of the Catholic minority in the North

and the Protestant minority in the South.

Cross-border economic cooperation would also
have made a substantial difference to relations.

Instead little was done and after 50 years
of partition few Protestants remained

in the Irish Republic and the
substantial Catholic minority

in Northern Ireland felt
isolated, and alienated.

Breakdown I suppose was almost
inevitable and when it came it was bloody.

In a population of only one and a
half million people more than three

and a half thousand were killed and tens of
thousands injured in the violence that followed.

Now these numbers may not seem large but the per
capita equivalent for the USA would be deaths

of 5 to 600,000 millions of people injured.

In 1972 the internal government was prorogued

and the Protestant/Catholic power-sharing
arrangement that followed talks

between the moderate unionist and nationalist
parties and the Alliance Party collapsed

in June 1974 after only six months in operation.

Civil society in the form of the churches,
the trade unions, the business community

and NGOs all appealed for, and worked very
hard for a settlement but to no avail.

In the mid 1970's a major peace movement was
led by women who felt particularly grieved

by the death and injury brought
about by terrorism.

Subsequently joined by many men,
these Peace People held marches

and organized many activities bringing
ordinary people from the two sides together.

It seemed to have mass appeal and its leaders
were awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace,

but in the end it came to nothing.

Business and professional
people who had been the backbone

of the public institutions left
political life, while the terrorists

on both sides seemed oblivious to the
suffering and economic havoc they were causing.

It all seemed very hopeless.

Indeed at that time and frequently
during the process

that followed it was very emotionally difficult.

We are a community of people who are not easy
to work with because both sides feel betrayed.

The Catholics were historically ill-treated by
the British and with partition felt neglected

and betrayed by their southern co-religionists.

Protestants felt they had served Britain
faithfully for centuries, not least in the First

and Second World Wars where the cream of their
young men volunteered for service and died

in the trenches of France
and many a foreign field.

Now no one remembered or appreciated those
sacrifices and instead they were being abandoned

and the very regiments and police service in
which they served and which were their defense

against the IRA were being disbanded
and they were being sold out by Britain.

Every single lesson I will describe in what
I say this evening was fought against by some

or all of us at every step of the way.

We did not come to them willingly, and we
saw them from very different perspectives.

I don't just mean that we viewed them
through different historical prisms

and that the different section of our community
inhabit a different cultural identities,

more than that our people actually
think differently about these things.

Catholics as a community tend to see
problems in a broader perspective and think

in a less linear way about them, and
when their leader decides on a course

of action they will generally follow.

Protestants however, will with difficulty
agree the agenda of a meeting prior

to getting indication of its likely outcome,
and then will not move until item two

until the agenda item one has
been satisfactorily disposed of.

Leaders in the Protestant community
are generally regarded as being there

to be criticized and the tendency to
split into different religious groups

and political parties is quite remarkable.

You will know that ours was a long-term
process with many ups and downs.

I started to get involved as a Party
Leader nearly a quarter of a century ago.

My beard was black in those days.

People are sometimes impatient with the
idea of a long-term process and many

in the Middle East have said to me that say
that they can't wait for such a process.

My response is that we can't
actually start sooner than now,

and if they have a better way, that's wonderful.

But if they've got a better way,
why haven't they started it already?

On the other hand there is
sometimes a temptation to wait

until you've got the right leader or the
right set of circumstances to start working.

But there's rarely a good time and when you
start even the little changes you can make

to begin to change do make a difference
to the situation and the attitudes

of the people you are working with.

Not only when we started, but even a very long
way into our process no one would have imagined

that the man who would finally
deliver the implementation

of an agreement was Dr. Ian R K Paisley.

I will return to this question of
leadership later, but please understand

that leadership does not mean
that we started from the beginning

with a grand plan in anyone's mind.

Principles emerged and we worked by trial
and error, trying to learn from both,

from unexpected successes as well as
disappointing failures and setbacks,

turning disadvantage to advantage
whenever possible.

Although it may take a long time if you get the
process under way and meetings are taking place,

the violence level does tend to reduce not
least when the community begins to see those

who do the violence as being against a peace
process in they have begun to invest some hope.

Although it may be necessary to have some
private meetings at the start and even

at times during the process, in the main it
is better that they are public knowledge.

And I'll happily say more about this
later since I know that for some

of you it may seem counter-intuitive.

But one of the reasons is that the key to
resolving such problems is the negotiation

of new ways of groups relating with each other.

People tend to focus on the content of
a solution and try to negotiate that.

But for much of our time we were
actually negotiating the process

and then subsequently the
fundamental principles.

It was only very late in the game
that we got to the detailed content.

Let me put it in individual terms.

If a young man invites a young woman
out to dinner and she focuses on whether

or not she is hungry and what is the content
of the menu in the place where they go,

she is rather missing the purpose
of the enterprise [laughter]

and it will almost certainly fail.

The young man is not trying to address her
need for food, but his need for a relationship.

It's not that the menu and
the venue are unimportant,

nor even that if they are disastrously
wrong that they will stand in the way

of a good outcome, but they are not the
essence of developing a relationship,

which is what the young man's
invitation is actually all about.

If these two young people have a history of
failed relationships and if their friends

and family are opposed to
this one, and if she falls ill

from food poisoning then a
good outcome is difficult,

but even without these problems
a good outcome is not guaranteed.

Much more than in relationships between
individuals you will easily appreciate

that addressing historic, disturbed
relations between communities

of people requires considerable time,
stamina, understanding, and external support,

even humor can be helpful and a
beneficent Providence is essential.

By a fortunate turn of history the
United Kingdom and the Republic

of Ireland joined the European Economic
Community on the same day in 1973.

As a result government ministers and
others met regularly within the structure

of the European Economic
Community and this began

to change the context of Anglo-Irish relations.

Mutual respect grew as practical working
arrangements developed, and twelve years later

in 1985 an Anglo-Irish Agreement was signed
by British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher

and Irish Taoiseach, Garret Fitzgerald, laying
the foundations of unprecedented cooperation

between the two states in addressing
the Northern Ireland issue.

In today's world, wars between states are
less common than intra-state conflicts

but even internal conflicts may
be symptomatic of wider issues.

This is one of the many reasons why
international cooperation is so important

in addressing internal conflicts.

That 1985 Anglo-Irish Agreement improved
relations between Britain and Ireland,

but while Catholic nationalists
felt less isolated,

the IRA continued its terrorist campaign.

And Protestant paramilitaries, feeling
betrayed by Britain took revenge

through further sectarian killings of Catholics.

It took a further six years of diplomatic
activity to get political representatives

of the two sides in Northern Ireland
to sit around a table to talk,

and even then the parties with
terrorist involvement were not present.

That took another five years.

This emphasizes two things.

The first is you can have a
political process without those

who are conducting the terrorist violence,
but you cannot have a peace process

in such long-term struggles
unless they are involved.

If security or other measures could
have worked without them being involved,

the war would presumably
have been over long since.

But it's hard to make peace with
someone unless you engage with them.

This was one of the most difficult things
for us to accept and we only came to it

because of the repeated failure
of all attempts to find peace

by bringing together only
the moderates on both sides.

Now it seems self evident to us that
it is necessary to bring in the people

who are causing the violence, but it
was in no way obvious at the time.

And it still is not at all obvious
to Israel and the United States

in dealing with Palestinian question.

The second lesson is the length of
time that such processes can take,

and during all of this long period it
was crucial that whatever Prime Minister

or party was in power in London or
in Dublin, the Process continued.

It was a national commitment, not
a governmental commitment only.

Margaret Thatcher, Charles Haughey, Garret
Fitzgerald, Albert Reynolds, John Major,

John Bruton, Tony Blair and Bertie
Aherne all led different governments

in London and Dublin during this period.

But all in their own way
regarded the Peace Process

as something that transcended party politics.

Without that sense of national
commitment in both Britain

and Ireland I do not believe
we could have come so far.

The degree of painstaking administrative
and procedural discussion necessary

in the pre-negotiation period
should also be noted.

During those years of what
became known as "Talks

about Talks" the parties edged
slowly towards the Table,

not by exploring the substantive
political issues,

but by discussing how they
could begin to engage.

This required commitment and devotion
by small teams of civil servants

and party officials behind the scenes,
setting up arrangements, smoothing the way,

and keeping records, notes,
and contacts in place.

And this orderly conscientious work was
necessary to hold the Process together

over all these years, and to facilitate the
involvement of people in all the communities

through their own representatives,
without which little progress can be made.

People will not feel a sense of
confidence or ownership of a process

or its outcome unless their own representatives
are involved, but creating the structure

and the political context where that can
happen is painstaking and frustrating work.

Those years were not years
of perfect achievement.

Mistakes were made regularly,
but the consistent,

gradual and increasingly
inclusive approach was essential.

I have seen a number of processes fail in
other parts of the world at least in part

from a failure to understand how
essential this infrastructure is.

I've already noted that the wider
international community was important,

and particularly during the two Clinton
administrations, the United States of America.

They provided economic assistance,
encouragement, expertise and mediation.

Visits were arranged for Northern Ireland
politicians to other parts of the world

to see conflict resolution at work.

South Africa was particularly helpful here.

The International Fund for Ireland was
established to channel financial aid

from the United States, the EU,
Canada, Australia and New Zealand.

This aid was targeted to give training,
consultancy and advice to small businesses

and community groups trying to build
a more entrepreneurial economy.

Just as the political task was to enable the
divided community to take shared responsibility

for its own governance, the economic emphasis
has been to help people build their own wealth,

take control of their own affairs, and
increase their engagement in commerce

and trade with the outside world.

Economic development is important in itself, but
it is an instrument with which to build peace.

It is not the essence of the peace-making.

Just as the European Coal and Steel
Community enabled France and Germany to engage

with each other after World War II, so
economic development is everywhere an important

confidence-building measure with
which to address real human needs.

But it is not the heart of peace-making,
that's a misunderstanding often held

by people from stable developed countries.

One of the most important contributions
made by our outside friends was the quality

of the help and the people they provided.

The personality and the approach of
Senator George Mitchell as chairman

of the multi-party talks that
led to the Belfast Agreement

in 1998 were particularly
important in this regard.

He did not bring his own solutions to the talks.

He listened patiently and
carefully for a very long time

to all the different parties to the problem.

He excluded no-one, and developed the process in
such a way that parties brought their proposals

to him in the presence of each other.

They did not reach agreement in
this way, but he built such trust

that when the parties had
exhausted the process of talking,

they asked him to bring forward
proposals based on his understandings.

This work of building a process,
rather than conjuring up a solution,

is the heart of conflict resolution.

It requires skill and stamina and like the
preparatory phase it may last many years.

There are many aspects to the negotiation.

The careful use of agreed,
non-arbitrary deadlines,

gradual building of respectful behavior
even the absence of feelings of respect,

devices to break through when there is deadlock,
and the imaginative use of different formats

for the talks are just a few of the skills
needed in this key phase of the process.

Perhaps the most elusive lesson
however is the appreciation

that there will inevitably be breakdowns.

But this should not be seen
as the end of the process.

A physician does not abandon his
patient because of a relapse.

He knows that this is an essential feature of
the ailment and he manages both his expectation

and his management of the
patient with this in mind.

The same is necessary in managing
inter-communal relationship breakdown.

I recall for example that as we approach
an election at one point in the process,

parties begun to take stanzas and say things

which would make a post election
resumption of talks much more difficult.

I ask for a private meeting with the other
leaders at the home of one of their colleagues.

Within 15 minutes, over a cup of tea, we
had agreed a public statement undertaking

that whatever happened and whatever was
said in the election, within days of poling,

we would return to the talks on the
same basis as before that we did.

I've said much about relationships and perhaps
I should describe how did this affected the

construction of the talks.

Over a period of years, we came to a shared
view that while there were disagreements

over the control of territory, the form
of government, historic responsibility

for our problems and grievances of all times.

There were three crucial sets of historic
disturbed relationships which we needed

to address between the people who lived in
Northern Ireland, Protestant or Catholic,

between the people of Ireland, North and South,

and between the governments
of Britain and Ireland.

Even this description is carefully coached.

You will notice that I say, "The people
who live in Northern Ireland" not

"The people of Northern Ireland."

I say Ireland North and South not Northern
Ireland and Southern Ireland and the description

of the two governments has a degree
of ambiguity about how either

of them really is to Northern Ireland.

Words are profoundly important
and the sensitivities

of such descriptions relationships would
be essential for those who are involved.

Now for the onlooker, perhaps even for
you, they maybe as puzzled and bemused

as the average American watching
a cricket match.

Having agreed these three sets of relationships,
the talks for constructive to address them

with the parties representing the people
in Northern Ireland meeting under Strand 1

with the British government present,
that's the responsible government.

Strand 2 dealing with North-South relations
included the Irish government as well.

And Strand 3 dealing with British-Irish issues
was an inter-governmental strand involving only

the British and Irish governments.

So this notion of three sets of relationships
who's not merely an academic exercise,

it actually structured the whole process of
the talks and who was engaged at what point.

The process not only came to include invitations

to all parties though country too
what you might imagine at new time

in the whole process did all
the parties actually agree to be

at the table together at the same time.

But they were all asked and their
chairs were kept while they were absent.

But it was also important to
include all the issues as well

as all the people he needed to be addressed.

One of the most controversial was
the possession of illegal weapons

and the parallel process involving the
same participants was created to deal

with what became known as the
de-commissioning of weapons.

Again, not only structure and process
but the language was important.

It was not the surrender of weapons implying
defeat of the IRA, but de-commissioning

which they undertook under
international supervision

as their contribution to building peace.

When we finally came to struggling
with the content

of what would become the Belfast Agreement,

the experience of the European
Union again showed itself.

In strum two a U-cross border cooperation is
mirrored in the North-South ministerial council

which brings together ministers from the
Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland

to deal with areas like agriculture,
economic development,

environmental protection, and transport.

In Strand three the British-Irish
strand very able geometry

of the new British Irish Council brings together
not only ministers from London and Dublin

but also the administrations of Scotland,
Wales, and Northern Ireland as well

as the Isle of Man and the Channel Islands.

The political and legal protection
for human rights which is central

to the new Europe is similarly a fundamental
feature of every aspect of the Belfast Agreement

and the key aspect of its implementation.

The most novel and creative element of the
Belfast Agreement is the sharing of part

of the Northern Ireland Assembly.

A winner-takes-all approach in our first past
post election would simply entrench union

as majoritarianism and this clearly
was out of the question from the start.

The new assembly and executive drawn
from it are entirely proportional

if a party takes ten percent of the votes,
it will get ten percent from the members

of the assembly, ten percent to
the memberships in chairmans of--

chairman of committees of
the host and most unusually,

ten percent of the ministers in the government.

Imagine the difference that would
make in the United States election.

In addition, the first in deputy first ministers

who represent the two largest
parties unionist and nationalist.

One from each of the two-man sections

of the community can only act
by agreement with each other.

The first minister, and maybe the leader
of the largest party in the largest section

of the community, that he cannot act without
the full agreement of the deputy first minister.

All of these components, the critical played
by influential international relationships,

the sustained political commitment over a long
period of time whatever government is in power,

a significant propriety period
of pre-negotiation, the difficult

but necessary inclusion of the
representatives of all parties,

the creation of sustainable economic
development a cross border trade.

The deployment of patient,
imaginative, and skillful mediation

through along-term talks process, an
element of institutional creativity,

and the embedding of international instruments

of human rights protection were all
vital aspects of our conflict resolution.

But they were not themselves
sufficient for success.

There are at least two others.

Until the people in any conflict
begin to turn away

from violence doesn't mean
it's solving their predicament.

They are unlikely to be prepared to accept that
the price of peace is worth the price of peace.

The community needs to be weary of war and
prepared to accept an outcome that is less

than their ideal, a compromise
for the sake of peace.

Central to this is the rebuilding
of the rule of law.

Dematerialization, decommissioning their
legal weapons, and reform a pleasing

in the criminal justice system
where the most difficult

and contentious issues of
all in Northern Ireland.

Frequently threatening to bring
down all that had been achieved

and only really being fully
implemented now more than ten years

after the 1998 Good Friday
Agreement itself was achieved.

Rebuilding the rule of law is an exceptionally
complex and emotionally demanding area

and it is closely linked to
the position of minorities.

Rights, responsibility, and respect for
minorities are also very difficult issues

but they cannot be avoided because
they are up the core of such conflicts.

The classically role of commitment to freedom
under the rule of law creates an environment

for the protection of minorities
but even international legal norms

and structures are rarely a sufficient
guarantor for the partisans in the conflict.

Usually, particular political protections are
required at least for a transitional period.

In Northern Ireland as I've just described,
the formation of the assembly, its committees,

and even ministerial positions involve complex
formulae and guarantees for both sides precisely

in order to give every community protection.

It's a very tight model of power
sharing constructed to deal specifically

with our own situation and it's not
without its problems, because it can lead

to long term political stasis and grid lock

and no one can tell whether
it will eventually survive.

But in the end it's necessary to move
beyond, even such processes, formulae,

and regulations in preventing
and resolving conflict.

While relationships in communities cannot
survive without the stability of structures

and relationships, they're based on more
than the observance of rules and laws.

There must be a spirit of
generosity and respect.

Without this, they cannot flourish and the
conflict is never truly put to the past.

Rules and rights can provide the context for a
conflict to be stopped but only a new culture

of mutual respect can prevent it from returning.

Developing map political culture of respect and
trust is not a prerequisite or a pre-condition

for reaching agreement, much
as for starting a process.

It is a possible outcome and
this the task of this generation

in Northern Ireland had shouldered.

It cannot be delegated to the next
generation for this would be to hand

on to them the poison legacy which we inherited
and that is no commendation for any generation

in Northern Ireland or in the Middle East.

This has been a story of a community made up
largely though not exclusively of two groups

of people and those with whom they relate.

One body of people, mostly Protestant, who
for political reasons and in some cases

because of religious persecution left their home
land, relocating under the edges of British rule

to another territory where they
displace many of the Catholic people

who were already living there and
establish a new legal and political entity

which they maintained for some hundreds of years

but which the original community
ceased to respond to as an occupation.

Eventually these strategic
circumstances changed.

So that Britain no longer require their loyalty
or for them to act to maintain its hegemony.

Within a very few decades of that change,

the stability of the territory became
increasingly uncertain in the light

of a long-standing terrorist stampede, this
purpose was to remove the British presence.

The enormous security of requirements, the
movement of people, and the polarization

of the community as result of the violence
and the high economic and political praise,

led to a withdrawal of the emotional
attachment by Britain despite the determination

of the majority of the people living in
Northern Ireland to maintain the status.

Their determination was not enough to
achieve stability on the contrary it led them

to missed opportunities for a
peaceful settlement even when it was

in their best interests and eventually they
have to accept a much less beneficial outcome

in order to achieve some
measure of peace and stability.

I do not think it impossible to see some
similarities between the Israel which emerged

after the Second World War on
the Northern Ireland that emerged

after the first First World War,
but most Israelis do not see that.

Prime Minister Netanyahu told me that the
difference was that the IRA did not want

to destroy Britain, but Hamas
wanted to destroy Israel.

He missed the point.

The Protestant unionists of Northern
Ireland were not exercised about Britain.

Their concern was that the IRA did
indeed want to destroy Northern Ireland.

The IRA posed, in the current
political parlance of the Middle East,

an "existential threat" to Northern Protestants.

I have previously seen the failure of
leaders to read the runes and learn

from historical similarities
despite differences.

Years after the fact an Ulster Unionist
leader came to my home to meet me

and bemoan his own failure to recognize
and grasp an opportunity for peace

when it was available in the
early 1970s, not appreciating then

that the next time there
would be less on the table.

Of course there are many differences.

Northern Ireland is no longer
of strategic significance.

In the past it was the crucial back-door for
invasion of England by the Spanish, the French

and others, as they demonstrated
repeatedly over the centuries.

But things changed after World War II and
within a few decades a British Secretary

of State was able to say that Britain
no longer had any selfish strategic

or economic interest in Northern Ireland.

That is not yet the situation for Israel and
the United States, but that time may come.

What cannot be doubted is that when the
United States no longer regards Israel

as an essential strategic asset, and
only recently General Petraeus reflected

on the beginning of just such a
change in a report to President Obama,

then Israel's isolation in the
region could develop very rapidly

and with it terrible violence and
an outcome not in the best interests

of Israelis whether Jewish, Christian or Muslim.

Much sooner than that it could be concluded
that a two state solution is no longer feasible

and that Israel may have to retain all the
territory it has been occupying for more

than forty years, but of
course, that would mean the end

of the Jewishness of the State of Israel.

It is not the Palestinians ultimately
who needed two state solution.

It is those Israelis who wish to maintain
Israel as both Jewish and democratic,

a not inconsiderable challenge in the long term.

When I began five or more years ago to try
to explore how far the experience we had

in Northern Ireland might be relevant
to Israel and the Palestinians,

I reflected on what had been the
most difficult lesson for me,

the realization that it would not be
possible to end the IRA terrorist campaign

without talking to their leaders.

The obvious read-across was to Hamas and
Hezbollah and so I made it my business

to start meeting them in the region.

I came to the conclusion that they were
both prepared, in their different contexts,

to engage in working towards a peaceful
outcome but they did not know how to do so,

and they could not without a constructive
engagement with Israel and the West.

Hamas repeatedly emphasized their
preparedness for a long-term hudna, or ceasefire

and Khalid Meshal recently went much
further in a meeting with Bob Axelrod,

Scott Atran, myself and other colleagues.

Prior to the disastrous South Lebanon war
Hezbollah asked me to write a paper for them

on how we had addressed the decommissioning
of IRA weapons because they wanted

to explore Western concerns
about their materiel,

of course the South Lebanon war knocked that
completely off the agenda and things have moved

on with Hezbollah now in government.

However, the consistent message was the same.

Palestinians, including those who were
leaders of the violent struggle, resistance

or terrorism according to your viewpoint,
all wanted to find a peaceful outcome

for the sake of their long-suffering people.

My experience of meeting with Israelis at every
level of society, including with some settlers,

is that they too really want a different
future for their children and grandchildren,

one where they can live in
peace, security and prosperity.

We could never have found a way forward without
the British and Irish Governments coming

to understand that they had a
critical role to play in dealing

with their own historic differences,
engaging with all parties

to the problem including the men of violence,
and acting as the engine of a peace process

through all the ups and downs
and for as long as it would take.

In the same way I believe that while other
governments and groups have a role to play

in finding peace in the Middle East, without
leadership and support from the United States

and Europe it will be well
nigh impossible to succeed.

After many frustrations during the
period of George W Bush's time in office,

I had high hopes of the new Obama
administration, especially after his appointment

of George Mitchell, an old friend who had
played such a key role in Northern Ireland,

and Hillary Clinton who was very familiar with
what had been necessary by way of engaging

with the leadership of the IRA
and the loyalist paramilitaries.

President Obama's Cairo speech had the
possibility of being a watershed in relations

with the Muslim world, but since
then we have the difficulties

over the settlements in the West Bank.

There is also a perception in the region
that he became, albeit understandably,

pre-occupied with getting the Health
Bill through Congress and making sure

that the oil spill in the Gulf of
Mexico did not become his Katrina.

The faltering over the settlements in the
West Bank has been mirrored by uncertainty

and a slipping back to older
rhetoric about how to deal with Iran.

And this is not the road to peace
and stability in the region.

Turkey has been prepared to help with Syria
and Iran, but their positive engagement

with both has been ignored, then discouraged,
and finally relations with Israel have broken

down over Gaza and the attack on the flotilla.

Syria has for years been trying to find
a way of emulating Jordan and Egypt

in negotiating a treaty with Israel, but
its insistence on the return of the Golan,

which not only international law
and the international community.

But Israel itself recognizes
is Syrian territory,

receives no serious, positive engagement.

Robert Malley and Peter Harling in the
current issue of Foreign Affairs describe

with striking clarity how the flawed
analysis of "good guys and bad guys",

"for us or against us," is leading to
aninexorable decline long term in US influence

in the region and a deterioration
in the prospects for anything other

than more serious possibly
even a major war in the region.

Two years ago in the journal India and Global
Affairs, a friend Sundeep Waslekar and I warned

that "If time is lost, more and more parties
will enter the dynamic of the conflict.

Currently at least the parties
concerned can talk

with each other in Arabic, Hebrew and English.

If they wait for a few years more, they
will have to conduct business in Persian,

Russian and Chinese if they are talking
at all, for the danger is rising

of a major conflagration in
the region with implications

for all of us, all around the world.

In the absence of an appreciation of the
need to talk with Hamas and Hezbollah,

and the British Government has taken
some steps forward and engaging

with the political wing of
Hezbollah, what can we do?

Is there anything further in the
European experience that we can do?

I have referred earlier to the European
Coal and Steel Community which the French

and Germans developed as an
instrument through which the resources

for war could be turned to
solely peaceful cooperation.

In meetings through the World Federation of
Scientists we have developed the idea of trying

to focus on "Water, Energy
and the Environment" as we--

as aspects of shared human
need and welfare in the region.

"Was it possible," we asked "to build
joint institutions to address these issues

and so begin to create the kind of institutional
cooperation which had been foundational

in improving British-Irish relations?"

The Swiss, Swedish and Turkish Governments
have committed themselves to financial

and diplomatic assistance
and a number of countries

in the region are already
participating in the discussions.

Our vision is shared by Prince Hassan of Jordan
and he participated in the two conferences

which have been held, the first in
February 2010 in Montreux, Switzerland

and the second in May 2010 in Amman, Jordan.

In two weeks time a further meeting will be
held in Turkey with a number of Governments

from the region and we are trying to
persuade other governments to give support

to and participate in this process.

It is a long a difficult
road, but as you will know

from what I have said a peace
agreement is like a marriage contract.

There is much good developing
of relationships before it,

and unless that work continues afterwards,

the fact of a legal contract will not
ensure that the relationship survives.

Are the prospects for the official process
that was re-launched this month in Washington

as bleak as most observers believe?

In June of this year, the Israeli government
appointed my colleague Lord Trimble formerly

David Trimble First Minister of Northern Ireland
to be one of two international observers serving

on Israeli Commission of Inquiry along

with Canadian former Judge Advocate
General Ken Watkin into looking

into the events surrounding the
Israeli raid on the Mavi Marmara.

You will all be familiar with the
events of the flotilla incident

and the subsequently adverse
diplomatic fallout for Israel.

David Trimble, the former First Minster of
Northern Ireland was of course the winner

of the 1998 Nobel Peace Prize jointly with John
Hume, the Northern Irish Nationalist Leader,

for their work on the Irish Peace Process,
but he was not always seen in that light.

I will remember the Saturday
night in September 1995

when he was elected Leader
of the Ulster Unionist Party.

A pall of gloom descended on the gathering
in which I was present that night.

David Trimble was seen as a real hard-liner.

He had defeated four other candidates in the
immediate aftermath of his controversial role

in the Drumcree conflict, in which he led a
controversial Protestant Orange Order march,

amidst Nationalist protest,

down the predominantly Catholic
Nationalist Garvaghy Road in Portadown.

He and the Democratic Unionist leader Ian
Paisley walked hand-in-hand as the parade

of loyalist triumphalism
proceeded down the road.

Local Catholics and Nationalists
angrily viewed it as deeply insensitive

when many Protestant unionists saw
Trimble as sticking up for them.

Moderates on all sides believed it spelt
the end of any prospects for peace.

However, shortly after his election David
Trimble became the first unionist leader

in 30 years to meet with an Irish prime
minister in Dublin and then in 1997,

the first unionist leader to agree
to attend negotiations with Sinn Fein

since Ireland was partitioned in 1922.

In 1998 the Good Friday Agreement
resulted in him going into Government,

not only with Dr. Paisley a
fellow unionist and the party

of constitutional nationalist John Hume
with whom he shared the Nobel Peace Prize,

but with Sinn Fein and the former IRA leader
Martin McGuinness also in the cabinet.

I have no idea whether Benyamin
Netanyahu recognizes, much less admires,

the role that David Trimble played in
the Northern Ireland Peace Process,

but as David Trimble himself told his own
people at the start of the Talks Process,

referring to the Republicans led by Gerry Adams
and Martin McGuiness who were in the room,

"Just because people have a past does not mean
they cannot have a very different future."

He proved it to be true, and so
can the Israeli Prime Minister.

What we need is not a change of
personalities, peace is about dealing

with your enemies whoever they
are, not choosing your friends.

Peace can be found by changing the approach,
of all concerned, not only the partisans

to the conflict but all of the stakeholders,
and that includes my country and yours too.

Both our countries had leaders who
profoundly changed their approach

to the cause of peace in Ireland.

It can be done for Israel
and the Palestinians too.

We owe it not only to future generations, but
to all of those who have died as well as those

who are left behind and still suffering,
all the Josh Rosenthals and Marie Wilsons,

all the Gordon Wilsons and
Marilynn Rosenthals, all the Israeli

and Palestinian people who
have suffered so much.

But we must not leave it too late.

[ Applause ]

>> Thank you very much for
those inspiring remarks.

You have offered to take
some question and answer

and perhaps I'd invite you to come back up here.

Since you're marked actually-- you might,
you don't need to stand right at the lecture

and if you'd prefer whichever
would be convenient.

So, we'll go until about 5:30 and he has said

that he will orchestrate the
question and answer period.

>> Thanks very much Susan.

Please.

>> Thank you very much for [inaudible].

My question is this.

One thing that you said during your speech
was the importance of detail in bringing

in as many parties as necessary not just the
two main parties and that got me to thinking

about Iran and I'd like to
hear your thoughts on this.

In order to have let's say an exchange
of Palestinians say no more violence,

let's say Israel [inaudible] what
the Palestinians call the [inaudible]

against the settlement occupation, et cetera.

What would you think about, for example,
Iran being brought in and for Israel's sense

of security which it's always complaining about,
Iran agrees to give up its nuclear arms program?

In other words you're bringing Iran into
the equation for the good of everybody

and if Iran could be persuaded with enough
cares to do that would that help expedite true

and lasting piece between Israel and Palestine?

>> Let me say first of all that Israel and
Israel's people must have a full reassurance

that they believe in, about their security.

Otherwise, nothing will work.

And of course that's also true for Palestinians.

They have to have that sense.

So in terms of the outcome of any settlement
which they will sign up to and live with,

there have to those kinds of reassurances
and there all kinds of elements to that.

I'm very weary of trying to require other
countries to fulfill certain requirement that we

or somebody else might have before
you even start engaging with them

but I think there are steps that can be taken.

President Obama started to try to take
some steps in opening up a conversation.

His predecessor did exactly the opposite when
he received a letter from President Ahmadi-Nejad

which I'm sure was not a particularly
congenial letter but nevertheless to throw it

in the waste paper basket was perhaps
not the most diplomatic thing to do.

[Laughter] It might have been wiser to explain
even publicly that the letter had been received.

It was clear that both of them had
responsibilities for the welfare of their people

that there were also major disagreements
that he would like to study the letter

and he would be instructing his
officials to do so and he would

like to get back to them in the next month.

And so you start a long and
difficult process of engagement.

It's not about jumping to the end of the line
and saying, "Okay, well you'll sign up for that.

We'll sign up for that.

Come on, let's go."

That's not the way these things can
possibly work but it is possible

to gradually begin the engagement and funny
things happen when you start to do that.

You know, if you start behaving respectfully
to someone it is just in the short of period

of time after that, a little more difficult
for them to be disrespectful about it.

I discovered this when I became the
speaker of Northern Ireland Assembly,

here we've got Dr. Paisley sitting over here,
Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness sitting

over here, the Ulster Union is
here, STOP here, Alliance Party just

in the middle here, rather appropriately.

And the question for me as speakers when these
people start discussing really difficult issues,

how am I going to keep from them
throwing things at each other?

'Cause when I was in [inaudible]
Council they did.

If there was nothing other than
microphone they threw the microphone.

[Laughter] And I thought well, you know,
one of the things that I have learned

from my parliamentary experience is if you
behave in a respectful way not by telling people

to be respectful, you know, when
parliamentarians say with all due respect

that means they're about to
say something disrespectful.

[Laughter] The [inaudible] with respect,

so when I came in to the chamber I would
just give a little court bow and, you know,

when you do something like that
people kind of feel like responding.

Don't repeat him in particular,
like to be a good parliamentarian.

He is a good parliamentarian and he knows
that when the speaker does that, you respond.

So when he did that then of course
all his colleagues thought well,

the boss is doing that, we'll do that too.

And then when the folks on the other
side saw it, they thought well, you know,

we don't want to appear ungracious and
so they would-- they would do it too.

Martin McGuinness was particularly
always scrupulously polite.

That once you do that, you know, if
you just show your respect to someone

for the first few minutes after that, they
just don't feel like being disrespectful.

And gradually over a period of time,
we go to position where frankly,

the behavior in the Northern Ireland
Assembly was hugely more respectful

than in the House of Commons.

[Laughter] Partly because people got
to the point of saying, "Actually,

we don't want to make fools of ourselves here.

We want our people to be proud of us.

We want to be able to portray our cause
sternly and strongly but we don't actually want

to wreck all of this because
it's what we've got."

So I think it's the same kind of thing.

It's not about, you know, can you get
around to do this and Israel to do that

and we'll do such and such and so on.

Its way, way down in the track
and the solutions you may come

to be may be the ones you're describing or
they may be something completely different.

The Roman for example, one of the things Iran
feels is, "Why should we not have the right

to the things you insist
on having for yourselves?"

That doesn't feel respectful.

Well, it maybe that that's not
the only way of getting respect

but that's how they feel at the moment.

But if all we do this treat them with
disrespect, then as sure as eggs are eggs,

that's the way they're going to go.

But the process of building the relation--
and it's not that it always works, you know?

There are enough young fellows
and older ones around in this room

who have tried building relationships to know
that they don't owe this work and it's true

of the girls here as well, you know?

It doesn't-- but there are some things that make
sure it doesn't work and I think we've indulged

in too many of those in our international
affairs over the last 20 years.

You know, there was a time at the start of our
process when a world leader was highly regarded

because he was building peace in the
former Soviet Union, in South Africa,

in the United States of America, in Europe.

And we lost that.

The big world leader was
the guy with the big stick.

I think we've got to try to find a way of moving
forward to the place where the vision we give

to our young people, the model we
give to our young people is the model

of leaders whose real commitment is to making a
better future for them and a more peaceful one.

>> Do you think it would change the
dynamics in the Middle East peace process

if we [inaudible] United States for the world,
had a much better handle on alternative ways

of doing the same things that we now use
fossil fuels or so that the governments

in the Middle East that are
exporting the greatest amounts

of oil no longer have that oil power.

>> I--

>> Or is it time lag too long
to-- [simultaneous talking].

>> Yeah, you're dealing with something
that is a hugely long term issue.

And the use of fossil fuels is not
just about enemy-- or about energy.

It's about a huge number of
organic products that we make.

So it's a highly complex issue.

And in a way what slightly worries me about
is that it's not about trying to find a way

of engaging and working together
but a way of trying

to isolate ourselves so we
don't need the other guy.

And so, I'm sure in some ways we will
move in that direction for a whole bunch

of reasons over the next 30 or 40 years.

In doing that, the position of Israel will I
think become much more dangerous for it's self.

[Inaudible Remark] No, I think it
will become much more dangerous

because if the United States no longer feels
that it needs a kind of aircraft carrier

in the Middle East, then Israel will fall
into the same position as Northern Ireland

where it is no longer a matter
of selfish economic

and strategic interest from United States.

But if it is an irritant which
means that the United States

and United States Military are
less welcome in the Middle East

in other guises then you will have some of
your military saying, "Hey guys, you know,

that's no longer in our interests" and,
you know, people should not imagine

that in the long term countries
act-- developed tourism.

Bob and I were discussing earlier on today
how, you know, a hundred years of relationships

between the United States and Britain
including through two World Wars disappeared

in an Eisenhower cabinet meeting when he
decided he wasn't happy about the way Britain

and France were dealing with things in
the Middle East and that was an end of it.

"Okay, tell those guys if they don't do
what they're told I'll bankrupt them."

And I-- you know, I think
from the experience of people

in Northern Ireland a generation will arise
that will not remember the relationship

if strategically it is no longer significant.

So it's a complex when you're raising we
will sure move in that direction ultimately

but it may not bring necessarily
peace and better relations.

There was a question up at the back.

>> Hi! I'm a graduate student and I'm doing
research on more like vision and social memory

of the troubles in Northern Ireland and in
the past couple of years there has been kind

of this movement in terms of cultural
memory and a creation of archives

and representation of the troubles.

And I was just wondering what your take on that
current environment in Northern Ireland was,

just given I know that there's
I think more bombings this year

than in the past several years like the
recent discovery of the [inaudible] bomb

at a primary school and, you know, there's still
conflict going on between, you know, both sides.

I just wanted to get opinion on the
environment and just about, you know?

>> Sure. Let's take a political bet first.

The debates and conflict
within parliament buildings

that are absolutely fine,
nothing to worry about at all.

People think that peace is about
getting people to agree with each other.

It's not. Peace is about
getting people to disagree

with each other without killing each other.

[Laughter] That's what it's about.

You try to create a political context where
you can argue the bit out with passion.

In fact if you don't argue it with passion,

it's no use because your people
believe you're just playing a game.

You're not really representing their views.

You really have to disagree with the
other guy and then, you know, ultimately,

you find kind of ways through it.

But that's what politics is,
that's why you call it parliament.

That's why it drives me crackers when
people say, "It's just a talking shop.

Wonderful!

It's better than the alternative."

So don't-- not that I wouldn't worry about
it too much in the short to median term,

of course there are things you got
to agree on ultimately, that's fine.

The question of the violence and the bombings--
let me explain a little bit about that.

As we went through the peace process many
unions, British government, Irish government,

Americans were very frustrated with Gerry Adams

and Sinn Fein 'cause they
moved incredibly slowly.

And I know from talking to him,
actually he himself got a bit frustrated

about how long it went on that his concern
was that he didn't split the movement

because there were people in the
movement who said, "You're selling out.

You know, the Brits will never
understanding anything except violence.

They're only suckering you.

You're going to end up being
in a British state."

And there are still some who say that.

But as he went along through the process,

every time he took a major step
there were a few guys dropped off

at the end 'cause they didn't agree, you know.

When they took their sits in the Dublin
Parliament, not the British parliament,

when they take a seat in the Dublin
Parliament there were some guys who split off.

When they took another step in the
peace process, some guys split off.

When eventually they said, "We
will support the devolution

of placing injustice," some guys split off.

But while the IRA was around,
none of these groups did too much

because the IRA would know
how to deal with them.

I remember one of the guys who as a former IRA
man and I was completing to him in the assembly

that one of his Sinn Fein colleagues was
causing me a lot of trouble, a speaker.

And he said, "Speaker, do you
want me to deal with him?"

And I said "No, no, no, no, no.

I'm on it."

[Laughter] Its okay, it's okay.

I'll manage.

Well, ironically of course, an independent
monitoring commission was set up.

Myself, the former acting
director of CIA Dick Kerr,

former head of Metropolitan Police Anti-Terror
Branch, former head of Department of Justice

in Dublin and the job of the four of us
was to monitor security force normalization

and the activities of the paramilitaries.

So what that meant was that the IRA eventually
moved to decommissioning but they had

to also stop beating people up and doing stuff
like that 'cause they would get a bad report

from the IMC and this wasn't a good thing.

Politically it wasn't a good thing.

However, while the IRA was still there,
the dissidents were just a bit careful.

They didn't want to knock on the door.

Ironically, when the IRA itself
really began to de-structure,

got rid of the engineering part
and, you know, stop recruitment,

stop training, all that kind of stuff.

These guys then began to say
"Huh, we're the real IRA, nigh?

We don't need the way about these 'cause
they get a bad IMC report if they came

out and did anything nasty to us."

So ironically, as the IRA went away,
these dissident groups which were smaller,

less sophisticated, less hierarchical,
more like a kind of social network,

all disagreeing with each other, each bunch
having their own army counsel and so on.

All of them also quite a lot
involved in criminal activity.

They began to get a bit more
bold and so what you're seeing

over the last little while is
somewhere of this dissident activity.

Not because there's support for it in the
wider community 'cause that's not the case.

The emotional drivers that were there
in the late 1960s aren't there now

but there are some people who will never
accept that there is a peaceful way of dealing

with our problems and the physical force
is not the solution to Ireland's problems.

And that's, you know, that's going to take
time and gradually dealing with things

and wearing things down and as they say,

it may be that the pattern is a
slightly different one as well.

But you're not talking about a gradual
return to the terrorist camp in.

You're talking about a number of
dissident groups and to some extent,

it's going to be a question of how Sinn Fein
and the Republican community actually deals

with that rather than, you know, the
British State or Union of-- or whatever.

That's much more something
within that community.

So, I think things are moving forward but you
shouldn't see it as a simple linear progression.

We have always hiccupped our
ways through this process

but it's still going in the right direction.

Thanks. There was a question over here.

>> I was wondering if maybe you could talk
a little bit more about the importance

of hard line personalities in these processes.

Kind of like, you mentioned, you know, Ian
Paisley in Israel, there's also [inaudible]

in the '70s and how important they are
to actually selling the idea of peace

to a community that may be a little
bit more conservative but it's looking

for this ultra conserved personality
that is now looking [inaudible]?

>> Yeah, it's a very interesting study and
there's certainly good reason to believe

that ultimately, it is kind of the hard liners
on each side who have to come to the conclusion

that it's in the best interests
of their own people and that--

that takes time and it's a risk for them.

And it's not-- I think ultimately, you know,

it's not simply a matter
of political calculation.

Two stories about Ian P. is I remember
long time ago saying to him, "Ian,

what is wrong with power sharing?"

And he said, "What's wrong with it?

I've been against it all my life
that's what's wrong with it."

[Laughter] Which was a persuasive
argument but, you know.

[Laughter] Then Austin after he had had this
extraordinary press conference with Gerry Adams,

where they went at the same table.

The two tables were at right angles to each
other and then the DUP were in this one

and Gerry Adams was in this one and both of them
were taken off for separate interview sand both

of them said the same thing
essentially which is,

"We did this for our grandchildren, you know.

We've been through all of this
and we don't want them to have

to relive it in the same kind of way."

And that was actually what we heard from a quite
hard line politician in the [inaudible] Bob.

"I want it to be different."

In fact, he actually went further.

He said, "I think I failed my son in
not having it done for his generation.

I must not fail my grandson."

And just seeing the enemy as a human being
who has real feelings about themselves

and about their families and about the
future of the community is really important.

Once you see them as something less
than human or different from human,

you're already on the road to trouble.

But you're right, these people
can lead me their people forward.

There is a sense of trust.

They don't have a feeling that they're going
to be old flanked from the outside as it were.

But they pay a price because not all
of their people will go with them.

Not all the Republicans run to Gerry Adams

and not all Ian Paisley's people
have gone with him either.

So they actually have to be
courageous at some point at a time

when they judge it to be possible.

You had a question?

>> What would be your advice to the independent
judges, the mediators in the United States

in the case of Israel and the
Palestinians on setting up an agenda?

You implied or suggested at one
point in your remarks that one walks

into a windowless airless room and there is no
agenda or there is no agenda that has finished,

you're working your way through a process
but what would be your advice to those

who are actually trying to
manage this in an in partial way?

How best could state department staff
and others involved as well as the staffs

and the people behind the scenes on the Israeli

and Palestinian side come
to step A through step Z?

>> Please, not windowless, airless rooms.

It's hard enough with like that alone.

The building we actually end up negotiating in
was not a particularly congenial one, but no.

It's tough enough with-- the advice that
I would give is first of all try in so far

as possible not to push your own agenda but
to genuinely try to facilitate these people

in finding their way forward
and then understanding that.

This is really difficult because every
state comes with a degree of agenda

or it wouldn't be there in the first place,
so one way beyond that is to have more

than one state cooperating with each other.

For example the United States and the European
Union which are very different agendas

in this kind of area and they then intend
to hold each other a little bit to account.

The British and Irish Governments
were the key for us.

They saw things from a different perspective.

They held each other to account but they
were absolutely clear they were the engine

and they have to hold-- they had
to contain things and not allow us

to play one parent off against
the other if you like.

And that's the key thing is to get more
than one perspective that genuinely tries

to help people to find their way forward.

What I tend to find is that people come in
with an agenda which is their country's agenda,

a timetable which is very often their
president's electoral timetable and then try

to ram it through in that kind of-- I remember,

one of your much esteemed
ambassadors to our part of the world.

I'm trying to make it as
indefinitely as possible.

[Laughter] Who asked me how long I thought
it would take to resolve the problem

and I was saying this to some
of the colleagues at lunch.

And I said, "Well, you know, it's been
about 25 years of violence at that stage

and I guess it would probably
take much the same length of time.

We've only been on the road about five
years, now maybe about 15 to 20 years."

And the individual concerned, I'll
try carefully not to give gender.

The individual concerned said, "But
it can't possibly take that long."

And I said, "Why not?"

And the ambassador said,
"'Cause I won't be here then."

[Laughter] I said, "Probably not."

[Laughter] But it wasn't the first
question on the IRA Army Council's list.

[Laughter] And that's the thing.

I mean I think there are a lot
of people who look for example

at what happened during President Clinton's
[inaudible]-- not with us but in the Middle East

and think if only there hadn't been
a presidential electoral timetable,

maybe a little bit more progress would have
been able to have made it at that stage.

So-- but these are kinds of perfection
and it's not an easy job at all.

>> Unfortunately, that's going
to have to be our last question.

>> Thanks Susan.

[ Inaudible Remark ]

>> And an organization like Pete's now that
will criticize the government and reports

out the settlements and tries to
make contact with the Palestinians.

Do they have a role or do you
think that it's a hindrance?

>> No. I don't think it's a hindrance and I
think there is-- there are number of rules.

One of the rules is to actually try to keep
things from completely falling apart and,

you know, there-- there were occasions
at home where we could have broken

down into an open civil war and we didn't.

And sometimes you wonder, "Why didn't we?"

And I think it was partly because there was
this web of relationships of people in all sorts

of bodies, academics, sporting, cultural,
religious, NGOs, charitable bodies, artists,

all sorts of people who were trying
to keep the relationships going.

So I think that's-- that is itself-- same thing
is you are keeping a degree of normal life going

and that's important 'cause this is
not a dress rehearsal for the people

who are leaving through this period of time.

That is their life and so, you're
enriching their life in the middle

of what is not are really
very pleasant place to be.

You also provide mood music in a sense
that helps towards the peace process.

You help to give some sense of
encouragement that things are possible.

It's the old business of lighting a
candle rather than cursing the darkness.

But you actually give people a sense of
hope and sometimes some of the people

that you give encouragement to are
people who can actually make a difference

and they just need that encouragement.

They just need that sustenance
to keep them hanging on in there

when frankly they feel like immigrating.

You know, they just feel, "Oh, forget it.

This is just hopeless altogether."

And there are some, not very many but there
are some of the people who follow the line

that you described who ultimately end
up playing a more substantial role.

In our situation, there were a few people, not
many but there were a few people over the years

who because of their religious
involvement or because of their involvement

in caring professions or in other ways became
important in communicating between people

who could not or would not otherwise meet.

So that is-- for a few people they actually
end up doing that but for all of those

who are involved, they need to know that they
are helping to sustain and maintain a degree

of humanity and human relations in
a context where all that is driving

in the process is driving people to forget
the humanity of the other and to descend

in a very inhuman and inhumane relations.

And to maintain that is of itself of enormous
importance in keeping things from deteriorating

and creating the context in which-- I often
used to say it is some of the young folk

who were working with me
politically, never mind outside.

It may be for our generation that our
job is simply to keep the hope alive.

And it will be for another generation
to have the incredible good fortune

to see the fruits of what we're doing.

But if that's what we have to do, then that
is our job and that is what we should do.

We turned out to be much
more fortunate than that.

[Inaudible] with you.

[Applause]

>> Thank you very much.

[ Applause ]

>> Thank you so much Lord Alderdice for those
thoughtful comments and for your candor.

We do have a reception outside just through
the double doors and I hope that all

of you will stay with us and
informally continue this conversation.

Thank you again.

>> Thank you very much.