Issues

The Haass agenda

IMG00075 Michael McKernan weighs up the considerable challenges facing Richard Haass as he chairs this autumn’s cross-party talks.

When Peter Robinson’s and Martin McGuinness’s compromise proposals on parading were rejected in 2010, followed by months of disputes and division about flags this year, it became clear that a new vigorous approach was needed if these contentious issues were ever to be finally resolved between the two traditions.

A round of consultations (which included all five parties on the Executive) produced the idea of a cross-party working group with a high-powered independent chair focusing intensively on all the most divisive issues and bringing an agreed set of proposals back to OFMDFM by the end of 2013.

The name of senior United States diplomat Richard Haass was duly announced as independent Chairman.

There is no doubt that if anyone is qualified to take on this assignment it is Haass. He has vast experience at the sharp end of US diplomacy as well as experience of Northern Ireland and its various factions. He was US envoy to Northern Ireland and was generally acknowledged to have performed well. And Haass, a Republican, is no shrinking violet – he currently favours unleashing US cruise missiles at strategic military targets in Syria, although he opposes full scale military intervention.

While welcoming his return, seasoned commentators rate Haass’s chances of getting agreement by the year end, as somewhere between slim and non-existent. Not because of any lack of commitment or capability on his part, but because the issues – flags and emblems; parading; and dealing with the past – are so intractable.

On flags and emblems, the parties are poles apart. They have agreed a ‘designated days’ solution on the flying of the union flag at Stormont but most unionists do not accept such a solution for Belfast City Hall. Where hard-line unionists are in control, the flag can fly in most places most of the time, whereas in republican-controlled areas, it can be dispensed with altogether.

Then there is the all-pervasiveness of red, white and blue across much of Northern Ireland in the summer as well as paramilitary flags and the breakdown of the current flags protocol. And unionists will focus on what they consider to be the provocative flying of the Irish tricolour by nationalists. There is no obvious solution, although tourism promoters may simply press Haass for less flag-flying all round.

The DUP and Sinn Féin came close to a deal on parading based on winding up the current Parades Commission and adopting a rights-based approach, which would effectively bring some of the most controversial parades issues in front of the courts for decision. It is likely that some similar model will be dusted down for Haass, but there is opposition to scrapping the Parades Commission and a general lack of trust on this issue.

The recent controversies around the Castlederg commemoration, the peace centre at the Maze and the compensation of victims only serve to show how dealing with the past is fraught with complexity and emotion. There is no agreement about what even constitutes a ‘victim’, much less about how they could be assisted. And the North is facing into a decade of anniversaries.

Expect Haass to relaunch some of the earlier Eames-Bradley report on dealing with the past – previously dismissed hastily. However, it will all be uphill work.

No-one will be more aware of the risk of failure than Richard Haass himself. He will have to manage expectations carefully. His target will be an agreed report and he may well achieve it. But the real test is whether or not anything even agreed by Haass with the five Executive parties can actually be delivered faithfully on the ground.

Haass in brief

• Born 1951, New York City

• Director of Policy Planning, State Department (2001-2003)

• Northern Ireland special envoy in the same period

• President, Council on Foreign Relations (since 2003)

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