Blair government U turns on IRA pardons

The government is shelving its bill to grant an amnesty to paramilitary terrorists who have been on the run for many years, the Northern Ireland secretary, Peter Hain, announced last night.

Mr Hain coupled his decision to an attempt to kickstart the stalled devolution process by promising talks in February aimed at finding ways to revive the Stormont government ahead of elections to the Northern Ireland assembly scheduled for 2007.

Citing growing public discontent over the continued payment of £32,000-a-year salaries, plus allowances averaging £53,000, to assembly members when Stormont has been suspended since October 2002, Mr Hain said the bill was £78m so far and could not long continue. "2006 is a make or break year."

But his statement to MPs at Westminster focused most backbench attention on the decision to abandon the Northern Ireland (offences) bill, which has been widely attacked since its second reading in the Commons before Christmas, and faced the prospect of being blocked in the Lords.
Mr Hain admitted that he had not brought forward the bill "with a spring in my step, because I knew how hard it was for those thousands of victims who had lost so much".

But the British and Irish governments had promised it in 2003 as part of the peace process and only hesitated because the IRA had not delivered on its own promise to end illegal military activities and disarm. Following the 1998 Good Friday agreement some 400 paramilitary prisoners were released on licence. But there remain 1,800 unsolved murders in the province. The bill would have enabled people who had been living abroad, or people suspected of murders before the Good Friday agreement, to avoid ever having to go to jail in Northern Ireland for offences.

Human rights critics were incensed that on-the-runs, including escapers, would not be expected to make any court appearance.

Sinn Féin had backed the bill - the only Northern Ireland party to do so - until the rival nationalist party, the SDLP, persuaded voters that it was unfair because it would mean that British soldiers who might in future be charged with offences during the 30-year Troubles would also be pardoned.

Sinn Féin did a U-turn, leaving its president, Gerry Adams, to say yesterday: "I told the British prime minister and Peter Hain directly that if the British government was not prepared to change the legislation to remove the inclusion of British state forces then the legislation should be withdrawn. They have now done so."

MPs from the DUP's Peter Robinson on the right to Mark Durkin, SDLP leader, welcomed the decision, which Mr Durkin said had been based on moral quicksand.

The Guardian from Michael White and Angelique Chrisafis