Mandelson attacks Blair for caving in to Sinn Fein leaders

13 April 2012

Tony Blair was last night branded 'unreasonable and irresponsible' over his handling of the Northern Ireland peace process by one of his closest political allies.

Peter Mandelson accused the Prime Minister of granting concessions to Sinn Fein in a desperate attempt to broker peace in the troubled region.

The former Northern Ireland Secretary - who was forced to resign from the Cabinet twice - went on to claim that Mr Blair had alienated unionists by 'conceding and capitulating' to republican demands.

Mr Mandelson's scathing comments come as Mr Blair once again attempts to revive power sharing in Northern Ireland.

The former minister praised Mr Blair for his commitment to the to Sinn Fein leaders process, dating back to the time when he became leader of the Labour Party in 1994.

But in an interview with The Guardian he added: 'In order to keep the process in motion [Tony] would be sort of dangling carrots and possibilities in front of the republicans which I thought could never be delivered, that it was unreasonable and irresponsible to intimate that you could when you knew that you couldn't.' Mr Mandelson also revealed that he once refused an order from Mr Blair to write a secret letter to Sinn Fein - an act which sheds new light on his second resignation from the Cabinet in 2001.

At the time, Mr Mandelson was criticised by Labour insiders for becoming over-sympathetic to the unionists and hostile to Sinn Fein leaders. But he told The Guardian how the Prime Minister demanded that he write a covert letter to Sinn Fein offering a form of amnesty to 'on-the-run' IRA fugitives.

Mr Mandelson said: 'I was at a performance of the Royal Ballet visiting Belfast and I was taken out three times during the performance to talk to No10 about this.

'I said, "I am not prepared to do it because I have my own standing to think of and a secret side letter is not how I want to do business".

'They came back and said that the Prime Minister takes a different view, that you do need to make these offers to the republicans and he wants you to write this letter.

'I said if the Prime Minister wants to make these offers I am afraid he will have to write his own letter.' The letter was sent and the concessions were formally offered to Sinn Fein at the Weston Park talks in July 2001, six months after Mr Mandelson left office.

But he said: 'Weston Park was basically about conceding and capitulating in a whole number of different ways to republican demands - their shopping list.'

Speaking about the talks, he added: 'When Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness entered the room you were expected to stand up. They were senior military, they were top brass. Apart from being leaders of Sinn Fein, they were leaders of the military council.' In an interview with The Guardian, Lord Butler, the former Cabinet Secretary, says: 'There was a lot to be said for paying a price to keep the bicycle moving.

'The issue is whether Tony Blair paid too big a price.' But John Reid, who succeeded Mr Mandelson in Northern Ireland, takes a different view.

He tells the newspaper: 'If Tony Blair's Labour government never did anything else but bring to an end the longest-running political dispute in European history and the longestrunning war probably in world history, on and off, it would be worth having the Labour government just for that.'

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