The Sinn Féin president, Mr Gerry Adams, proposed the establishment of a "victims-centred" truth process when he yesterday published a new Sinn Féin discussion document called Truth dealing with how a line could be drawn under the North's recent violent past.
Amid a number of varying efforts to stimulate a debate on whether Northern Ireland could handle a truth commission, Mr Adams said there was a need for society to collectively examine how it could find closure on the Troubles.
"The process needs to be victims-centred. There must be no hierarchy of victims, and the objective should be healing both for victims and society," said Mr Adams. He indicated that if a truth process was created, he would expect full co-operation and disclosure from the IRA.
The five-page Sinn Féin document did not specify what type of process was required but suggested it would be along the lines of some form of independent truth commission, possibly fully or partly modelled on the South African commission. Since 1968 or 1969 about 3,700 people have died on the island of Ireland and elsewhere in Troubles-related violence.
The Ulster Unionist leader, Mr David Trimble, indicated that he saw no participatory role for unionists in such a truth process notwithstanding Mr Adams' remarks that it should examine the causes and nature of the conflict. He said that the "truth about 30 years of death and destruction has got to be uncovered from the dark pages of republican history".
