Description

The most complete guide to the Northern Ireland peace process, this edition marks the tenth anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement. By an authority on the process who covered the talks daily, it is an exciting, blow-by-blow account of the lead up to the end of the conflict. Providing insights into the behind-the-scenes activities resulting in the power-sharing government of Sinn Fein and Ian Paisley s DUP the author assesses the outcome of the peace process and whether or not there may be moves towards a united Ireland.
This new, updated edition reveals: * Different sides in the negotiations became so closely involved senior British and Irish civil servants drafted statements which were subsequently issued in the name of the IRA; * Tony Blair turned the air blue with expletives as he discovered his government was giving Ian Paisley a photo album for his 50th wedding anniversary while the Irish Government s present was a sculpture carved from a tree on the site of the Battle of the Boyne; * Secret sessions took place between British, Irish and republican representatives in Belfast s Clonard Monastery to resolve the issue of IRA decommissioning; * The Irish Government thought the British had unilaterally sidelined the Good Friday Agreement at the closing stages of the St Andrews talks in Scotland in October 2006; * The Irish played Gaelic football in the Hillsborough grounds between negotiating sessions; * Crucial negotiations between Sinn Fein and DUP ended with diagrams of the seating for their joint announcement in March 2007 that they were going into government together.