An editorial in the current issue of the Church of Ireland Gazette has suggested that the current impasse in the North is due to the inclination of the Northern Secretary, Dr Mo Mowlam, to favour a nationalist rather than a unionist solution to the Northern Ireland problem.
The "debacle at Stormont on Thursday of last week" might have been avoided, it said.
The UUP leader, Mr David Trimble, was anxious to prevent a debate in the Assembly of a DUP motion to exclude Sinn Fein. He also felt it would be counterproductive to trigger the appointment of ministers.
"But the SDLP, particularly Mr Mallon, felt the opposite. Dr Mowlam chose to trigger the process, with the farcical results now familiar worldwide. . .Nobody gained from this pantomime," the editorial says.
Dr Mowlam was humiliated and "Mr Trimble and his party were represented to the international audience as being contemptuous of democracy and the nationalists and republicans were enabled, once more, to fill the role of victims".
Artificial deadlines, the editorial says, were the direct result of the extended involvement of the British Prime Minister, Mr Tony Blair, in the negotiation process. He is a busy man who wanted results quickly, it said. "But would he have been so heavily committed had relationships between the unionist interest and the Secretary of State been better?" it asks.
Dr Mowlam had been Mr Blair's choice for the job. She was an able minister and had proved herself in opposition. "But as shadow minister she had also shown herself to be inclined to favour a nationalist rather than a unionist solution to the Northern Ireland problem," it says.
