The encounter between Mr Ken Maginnis of the Ulster Unionist Party and Sinn Fein's chief negotiator Mr Martin McGuinness on BBC television last night provoked no political breakthrough. But it did define the arguments with which the two parties will confront each other if they ever get into talks together. Mr Maginnis focused on consent while Mr McGuinness argued that the logic of the two politicians appearing on BBC 2's Newsnight programme in their half-hour debate was that they should also challenge each other in inclusive negotiations at Stormont.
It was a frank and fairly disciplined debate chaired by presenter Gavin Esler.
Initially, Mr Maginnis said he was "being asked to sit down now with the leader of the IRA, with Martin McGuinness who has been the chief of staff, who is the godfather of godfathers".
Mr McGuinness admitted he had served two prison sentences in the South for IRA membership but rejected "absolutely" the allegation that he was or had been a senior IRA figure.
Mr Maginnis said he was on the programme because he had a responsibility to learn "what the IRA and Martin McGuinness want. The IRA is going to come to the table. If they are coming with their guns and the threat of violence then there can be no progress". Asked why he now would talk to Mr McGuinness he said: "I felt it was wrong to let the IRA come onto the airwaves unchallenged."
Mr McGuinness dwelt on discrimination and killings early in the Troubles by the RUC and British army of Catholics, to try to rebuff the effectiveness of Mr Maginnis's allegations about his IRA history. He adverted to Mr Maginnis's former membership of the B-Specials and the UDR - two organisations which, he said, had inflicted suffering. "All of us have suffered, all of us have inflicted suffering."
When he was 15 he was denied an apprenticeship as a mechanic at a Protestant-owned business in Derry because he was a Catholic. "Had my name been spelt the same as Ken's or from an area different than the Bogside I probably would be a mechanic by now."
"We have had 27 years of all of that and now let's put the recrimination to the side."
Later in the programme Mr Maginnis rejoined that Mr McGuinness was trying to justify IRA killings "because he did not get a job in nineteen hundred and something"
Mr Maginnis persistently argued that the biggest challenge for Sinn Fein was to accept there could be no constitutional change in the position of Northern Ireland without the consent of the people of Northern Ireland. Such an acceptance would be tantamount to republicans signing up to a "partitionist" settlement.
"If you believed that you would have been in talks [with Sinn Fein] three years ago. You don't believe that," Mr McGuinness said. "Irish republicans in talks will be stating that there can be no internal solution within the North. Everything will be on the table including the Union and the Government of Ireland Act," he added.
Consent and all other issues would be on the table on September 15th, said the Sinn Fein MP.
The UUP MP accused Mr McGuinness of lecturing him, and of refusing to accept that consent was an essential element to any settlement.
Mr McGuinness, while insisting that all issues must be addressed in inclusive talks, welcomed Mr Maginnis's and the UUP's decision to confront Sinn Fein in debate.
"The logical extension of all of this, Ken, is that we must move into inclusive negotiations," he said, adding that after the programme the two of them should go into a room and have a private conversation about the way forward.
"That would bring us nowhere because Martin McGuinness won't say the IRA will disarm," Mr Maginnis replied. He added that he learned nothing new from his Sinn Fein adversary other than he would not give "straight answers".
Mr McGuinness felt the debate was useful. "I am very encouraged by what has happened here tonight. I am encouraged that Ken Maginnis and others now accept that Sinn Fein need to be involved in negotiations if there is to be any hope of a resolution of this conflict," he added.
