NEW ATLANTIC INITIATIVE EVENT
Fighting Terror and Winning
Tuesday, November 19, 2002

Transcript Prepared from a Tape Recording

Agenda:

8:45 a.m.	Registration
9:00	Introduction:	Radek Sikorski, NAI
	Presentation:	David Trimble, Northern Ireland Assembly
	Discussion
10:30	Adjournment

Proceedings:

MIN. TRIMBLE: In order to describe some of the ways in which the terrorist campaign has been overcome, we need to actually say a little about what the nature of the problem was. One may wonder why, within a democratic society, we had the Troubles begin and why we had the experience over nearly 30 years of the violence that was there. There were two basic elements in it.

Northern Ireland can be seen as a sort of borderland between Britain and Ireland. It's the part of Ireland that's closest to Britain. And the population of Northern Ireland is not homogeneous. When Ireland seceded from the United Kingdom in the 1920s, the issue arose, what happens with regard to that part of Ireland, the Northeast, where there was a significant number of people who regarded themselves as British and did not want to leave the United Kingdom? The result was the partitioning of Ireland, so that Northern Ireland remained part of the United Kingdom, did so on the basis that a majority of the population of Northern Ireland regarded themselves as British. But the problem continues because--continued because that population was not homogeneous.

At the start of the Troubles that we're going to refer to--that is, in the late '60s--the population balance was roughly, you know, 65-35 between people who would identify themselves as British and people who'd identify themselves as Irish. Because of the issues that led to, you know, the partitioning of Ireland, the secession of the Irish Republic, there were continuing problems within Northern Ireland. The minority considered themselves to be excluded from participation within society, considered themselves to be disadvantaged or discriminated against. I'm not going into the detail of those, and there's still a lot of argument about the extent to which discrimination and disadvantage occurred. But there was no doubt that there was a, you know, a problem there.

And there were people within the Irish nationalist minority who wanted to focus on this issue, and started what they called a civil rights movement in the 1960s. Again, I'm not going to go into the detail of this or how that was perceived, because there was ambiguity in that situation as to whether this was a movement which merely sought to ameliorate disadvantage or whether it was a stalking-horse for a fresh nationalist, you know, search.

When they--but they were through the problems that are always there, there were these two distinct elements. There were those who were simply nationalist who wanted just simply to detach Northern Ireland from the United Kingdom and create an all-Ireland state, who knew that they would not be able to achieve that by democratic means, because they would not get a majority of the people of Northern Ireland ever to vote for the united Ireland, and they therefore believed that the only way in which they could achieve their goal was through violence. And that was one stream in the problems.

The other stream in the problem was those whose main aim was simply to reform the political and social structures and to integrate themselves into the society in which they lived.

So there were those two elements were there. And roughly, you could say those two elements are reflected in the two main nationalist parties that developed, namely the John Hume Social Democratic and Labor Party, which was essentially reformist, and Sinn Fein, which was essentially revolutionary, we use those--that term, and those distinctions continue.

As to why the campaign failed, Jack Holland, who hails from west Belfast though now he lives in New York, and is well-connected with nationalist thinking, tells the story that at the beginning of the IRA's campaign, they checked on what happened in Aden, which had been a British colony which the British left in the mid-1960s. They discovered that Britain left Aden after, I can't remember the exact figure, it was either 37 or 42, something like that, after, you know, 30 to 40 soldiers, British soldiers, had been killed. And so they said to themselves, "Right, that's it. If we killed 30 to 40 British soldiers, the British will leave." You know, that simplistic approach. And one of the main reasons why the campaign failed is that that reaction that they were hoping for never happened. There was never within the British public as a whole a serious movement to abandon Northern Ireland.

And insofar as Republicans were hoping that as a result of violence, they could bring about a situation for the government in London to say, "We're fed up with the situation; we're getting out. The way they got out of Aden or the way they got out in Palestine in '48." That simply didn't happen. Oh, there was grumbles and complaints, and opinion polls would occasionally, you know, answer questions of that nature in a particular way.

But there was never a serious political movement with any significant support, and the only time when the action was ever seriously canvassed within the British state, which was in 1975 when Harold Wilson set up a cabinet committee and told them to go and think of the unthinkable, and that was one of the options they looked at. As soon as the Irish government got wind of that happening, they panicked.

Garrett Fitzgerald was then the prime minister. He got in touch with the White House immediately and said, "We hear rumors that the British are planning a withdrawal; you've got to tell them they mustn't." That's by the way. I mustn't get into too much detail in this. But that aspect, that there was never any serious change in--sorry--that British public opinion remained solid in this matter was quite important.

The other thing that's important over the years is that British policy right from the outset distinguished those two elements within the campaign and proceeded to try and ameliorate the questions of disadvantage, exclusion, discrimination and so on, so as to, you know, sort of to draw in a significant element of nationalist politicians and opinion to an approach that was essentially reformist. So they responded to that element within it.

The security forces, the police and the army, became increasingly effective, just simply of the technology that they were dealing with and the methodology they were using, although there were some events in the early years where the authorities were not, perhaps, that skillful in dealing with the situation, but they became increasingly sophisticated in their response to it using the range of material that's available to a modern state in terms of surveillance, in terms of finding out what people are doing, in terms of turning people.

I can't go into detail in this, but for those who want to sort of read a little bit further in this, there are two volumes I would particularly recommend. There was a senior peace officer who unfortunately was killed in a helicopter crash in the Mull of Kintyre just a few years ago. His name was Phoenix. And his diaries which he'd written, comprehensive diaries--he shouldn't really have written diaries as detailed as he did, but his diaries were subsequently published, partly edited by Jack Holland, that I referred to, and it's just referred to--published under the name of the Phoenix Diaries. And there's a chap called McGartland, who was an IRA activist in West Belfast, who turned informer, and his account of that published under the title "50 Dead Men Walking."

The interesting thing is, the two books are contemporaneous. They're dealing with the same period, the same time, and they show quite vividly the way in which the IRA was penetrated and the way in which its operations were frustrated. And indeed, fascinatingly, the same operations are described from both sides, both from a policing side and a paramilitary side, in that.

So you've got a firm public opinion, a political approach which is designed to ameliorate and detach support away from those involved in violence. You've got sophisticated, you know, security measures that are designed to frustrate what the terrorists are doing. And it all comes--it takes time, it takes a lot of time for the state to get all those things to be working together, but they do get it all working together and they're there for the long haul. I mean, in the early years, people thought there were quick fixes, and the quick-fix attempts to deal with this matter simply didn't necessarily work.

There were also changes in the underlying situation which it's worth just reflecting on. The nationalism, old-fashioned territorial nationalism of the '30s, the model of the '30s, not altogether appropriate in Western Europe in terms of the situation in the '70s, '80s and '90s.

So the basic drive that was there behind the terrorist elements, their ideology is weakened. They may continue to believe in the ideology, but the ideology has declining appeal, not only in terms of the nationalist minority in Northern Ireland, but also in terms of people in the Republic of Ireland, because naturally they looked to the Republic of Ireland for support.

There were elements in the Irish state in the early years who were prepared to--or appeared to be prepared to give positive support to the terrorist campaign, who even at one stage may have tried to think of the IRA as people who had waged a proxy war on behalf of the Irish state; to say there were elements in the early years who looked that way inclined. But--and this is really the subtext of the arms crisis that broke in Dublin in the early--the very beginning. But the Irish state steered clear from that, and the Irish state, throughout the period after the arms crisis, consistently supported moderate elements in the conflict. And that is quite important; that and the changes in the ideology, in the terms of how people perceive nationalism and their commitment to nationalism--those are quite significant in terms of the general overall background.

So as I say, the sophisticated political approach, the change in the ideology, all altered the context and brought about the situation whereby in 1992, the British government believed it had received a message from the person believed to be the leader of the IRA, and which the message said that we recognize that the war is over, but we need your help to bring it to an end. Now, the person who was then recognized as being the leader of the IRA denies now sending the message in precisely those terms. The go-between does admit that he improved--that he gave the thing a little bit of a helping hand while passing the message on. And it left the IRA leader as an oral message, so you know what it's like with oral messages that are passed from hand to hand; they can be improved upon. But even if the message wasn't dispatched in precisely the terms received, it did contain a significant element of truth in it.

Through 1992 there was an indirect series of contacts going on between the British government and Republicans. And one thing that's quite--I think quite significant, during those exchanges of 1992, that the British government is absolutely unequivocal that there will not be serious talks or any form of negotiation until there is first and foremost a cease-fire; that if the people who are involved in terrorism wish to become, as it were, start coming into the process, there has to be a cease-fire. On the business of there being a cease- fire and a commitment or expressed commitment to peaceful means through what were called the Mitchell principles, from a report of a committee--a group of international experts under the chairmanship of George Mitchell, which report came out at the beginning of 1996, this business of a cease-fire and a commitment to the Mitchell principles was regarded as being essential for participation in the talks.

Now, as you know, the talks resulted in agreement, and since then, we've been engaged in sort of implementing that agreement. I would have some criticisms about the way in which the process has been managed.

I think while the government has--its heart's been in the right place, I think the actual management of the process maybe hasn't been as good as possible. And this process was supposed to be that of people hitherto involved in terrorism coming into the democratic process, provided--on leaving terrorism behind. The lines maybe haven't always been drawn as clearly as they could, and the transition has been drawn out more, prolonged more than we would have liked. But essentially that process is still happening.

In terms of, you know, dealing with things elsewhere--and I'm thinking people always ask me about parallels, particularly with the Middle East--one thing I think that one needs to reflect on is actually, you know, the distinction there was in Northern Ireland between two parties, one moderate, one militant, and the state to which they looked for support consistently--well, after maybe a few little wobbles in the early year or two, they consistently supported the moderate element. And it was with the moderate element, essentially, that we were making an agreement in terms of the talks.

If the neighboring state had consistently supported the militant element, then there could--this process could never have happened, that--there could not have been what happened. The moderate element could not have made--entered into an agreement with the British government or ourselves against the opposition of the militants when the militants were supported by the neighboring state. They couldn't have done it against the wishes of the neighboring state, with whom they identified. So that is actually, you know, critically important in this.

As I say, the--one can go into a lot of detail about the technology of anti-terrorism and the methodology of it, but bearing in mind, you know, the political context in which one operates and in political analysis that was there in terms of the nature of the organization that you're dealing with, these things, I think, are critical, you know.

Terrorism is also--can be defined, the way Clausewitz does, as a continuation of politics by other means. So that is always important. That understanding of the nature of what you're dealing with is crucial.

The other thing--I would say that many people in the early 1970s could have scribbled down on the back of an envelope the main elements of the political outcome. And the outcome that we had isn't radically different from the--in terms of its basic principles, from the sort of initiatives that there was then. But it took us 20 to 25 years to get the right context and to get the right details in terms of--you know, you could state the general principles of what you think the outcome will be, but you've still got to get the details right, and we didn't always--the earlier attempts didn't always get the details right. So it took a long period of time to get the details right, but also a long period of time to get the right context, to reach a situation where people were prepared to make the effort that's involved in any sort of political negotiation, knowing that that involves elements of compromise.

While cumulatively the Northern Ireland problem was--has seen, you know, some 3,400 fatalities over the 30 years, as each year went by, it was a low-intensity operation, and a lot of people were able to adjust their lives and their, you know, how--and society was able to adjust to it.

And maybe if it had been of greater intensity, there might have been a greater urgency about trying to achieve a solution at an earlier stage. I say maybe; I don't want to put too much emphasis on that. But it took a long period of time until the circumstances were right, and efforts to achieve things very similar to the agreement that we had at earlier stages failed because for one reason or another the context and not everything was in line for it.

It is actually quite a complex process managing this, and that aspect of it one has to bear in mind. There aren't easy solutions to these things, and none of the--you know, you can't be always sure. You might think you've got the right analysis of it, you might be fairly sure that what you're proposing corresponds to the balance of forces within that society or within that region. But actually, getting everything in line and making sure it runs smoothly becomes quite difficult.

MR. SIKORSKI: Thank you very much, Minister. If I may recap, to defeat the terrorists, you need firm public opinion on the part of the society that's been attacked. You need the amelioration of genuine grievances. And as far as the Middle East is concerned, we have the same Senator Mitchell making his recommendations. We need the suppression and penetration of terrorist organizations. And we need a declining appeal of ideology, which is helped if the state actors that exist in the area support the moderates rather than the radicals, which as we know, is not the case in the Middle East. In the Middle East, a great deal of money is still flowing to spreading a radical ideology.

With that, I open the floor to questions to Mr. Trimble.

Q (Off mike.)

MIN. TRIMBLE: Well, the--it is part of what I was referring to by saying I have criticisms about how the process has been managed. In terms of implementation of the agreement, things have not gone smoothly; it's gone by fits and starts. Those who were involved in terrorism before the agreement are extremely reluctant to give up the paramilitary organizations. They may think that there is some political gain from, you know, the threat of force or the implicit threat of force they present. There's also the very real factor that, you know, parts of Northern Ireland--I remember a senior army officer at one conference, you know, 15, 20 years ago, saying that in parts of Northern Ireland, terrorism is a high-status, low-risk occupation; you know, people do quite well in terms of local power, money, and so on, from it. And that is a problem, persuading people to give up the power and the wealth that comes from it.

So things have moved slowly. And as I say, we've gone from crisis to crisis.

We're in another one at the moment. Actually, I always regard these crises, if we can handle them properly, as being opportunities to actually move forward significantly, and I'm hoping that that will be the outcome of the present one. And the previous crises have resulted in, you know, progress, although limited, and I think we're hoping this time that we can actually get to the point of making people--or compelling people to make the decisive break with paramilitarism. If we don't succeed in doing that, then we're going to have an even bigger problem.

And, you know, sort of heading towards the end of my comments, nothing is guaranteed to work. You know, you might think you've got everything organized, you may think that your analysis is right, that you've got a set of arrangements that will meet the nature of the problem, but it still isn't guaranteed to work. I mean, all sorts of chance factors can come in and derail the process. So I'm hoping as a result of the present crisis we see a very significant step forward, but I'll come back in six months and we'll see whether we succeeded or not.

Q It's been estimated that all the paramilitary groups together are making close to 20 million--(inaudible)--organized crime and things like that. To what extent do you think that that is presenting a roadblock for a political settlement on things like policing?

MIN. TRIMBLE: Well, it's not causing a roadblock with regard to--in fact, actually if anything, it's indicating the need to ensure that we do have effective policing which is broadly supported. And most of the parties in Northern Ireland would, in fact, be supportive of that, and we've got the situation where the SDLP are participating on the policing board, and that's a huge step forward. And the policing board has worked well, and as a result of that, the police are becoming more effective.

But you're quite right to say that within the racketeering, there's huge sums of money being made, and there's actually no way of cutting off--at least we can't see any immediate reduction in the opportunity because the main smuggling or the main money is coming because of the rates of duty that the British government maintain on tobacco and fuel, which cause a huge price differential between the prices of fuel and tobacco within the United Kingdom and outside, so that there's huge cross-border smuggling. And most of the money coming from that is actually going either into hands of individuals or various republican groups. Loyalist racketeering tends to be mainly drug related and other simpler, cruder forms of extortion and things like that.

But I mean, the rackets are significant. And some of the paramilitaries will--and are in the course at the moment of privatizing themselves and just becoming simply racketeers. And for that, there will be a police response, and it can only be a police response. But it is part of the reason why the organizations continue or appear to continue. It's very difficult for people to--in fact, it's difficult to see people voluntarily giving up the wealth that's there, so we do need, actually, effective policing. But the more that the community sees this as being a problem of racketeering rather than the incidental effect of a struggle, a political struggle that they, you know, feel some sort of sympathy with, the more we get people to see it as racketeering, the easier it's going to be to deal with that.

MR. SIKORSKI: Here at the American Enterprise Institute, we are very glad to hear that lowering taxes in Britain would be not only good for the economy but would actually also deal with the remnants of terrorist organizations.

MIN. TRIMBLE: Indeed. (Light laughter.)

MR. SIKORSKI: Please, sir.

Q Can the terrorists still raise money from private sources in the United States, as they did for a long time?

MIN. TRIMBLE: Well, we're dealing here largely with anecdotal information, because it's so difficult to be precise about this. The most people--commentators on the matter seem to take--say to us that the amount of money that republicans--Irish republicans are raising in the United States has declined, and declined significantly, after September the 11th but still continues to an extent. We don't--it's difficult to say just how extensive this is. My own hunch is that it is much less significant than the money that terrorists are making from the rackets that were just discussed a moment ago.

Q How could you use the reasons for success in Ireland to make recommendations to the United States about how to deal with its threat of terrorism?

MIN. TRIMBLE: Well, I think you've got to--I mean, the--if we're thinking of the threat from al Qaeda, that raises huge problems, which--I don't see how one can resolve them easily. Al Qaeda comes from a particular brand of Islam which is very hostile to the West as a whole, the United States in particular. In some respects, it seems to be--and I'm qualifying this, because I'm not an expert in this by any means--but it seems to be a by-product of the first war in the Gulf, you know, that the presence of a Christian army in the land of the--which was the guardian of the holy places within Saudi Arabia, is part of the elements within it.

On the other hand, there are elements behind al Qaeda which seem to relate to the comparative failure of the Arab states to offer reasonable opportunities to large sections of its population. You know, if you take oil away from the Arab states, they're not terribly successful. And you've got--a lot of the people who are involved in al Qaeda appear to be from--people who you'd have thought of were from well-to-do, middle-class backgrounds. And so that points to similar elements that are a problem there.

So I find it actually quite difficult to see how you're going to deal with this. But to deal with paramilitary--with the terrorist threat simply by improving the sophistication of one's armed forces is not actually going to do it. And I worry about and people did worry about--and in fact, obviously, the U.S. government worries about--the impact within American society of operations that involve significant casualty figures. I mean, so much of the--what the U.S. government is doing is in such a way as to minimize U.S. casualties; I mean, that there's still this worry about whether U.S. public opinion is actually strong enough.

Q To do what?

MIN. TRIMBLE: To engage in a significant struggle that lasts a period of time, you know. And I think that's something that only, you know, the people of the United States themselves can--that's a question, point that only they can answer, because if you're going to engage in a long-scale struggle against various forms of terrorism, then you've got to bear in mind it is going to come at a cost.

Q In terms of there not being anything without the neighboring Arab states, do you think there's any way to--for the United States to work that in terms of--with lessening support? Do you think they're--(off mike)?

MIN. TRIMBLE: Well, again, I'm hesitant to say too much on this because I'm not an expert in the Middle East and I don't want to come out just sort of off-the-cuff comments about the nature of societies that are there.

It seems to me that Turkey and Egypt are absolutely pivotal to it. They're the most successful, you know, Islamic Muslim states, in terms of their own stability and their success as states. They're absolutely crucial to this. And I think actually the concern that some people expressed about the outcome of the recent elections in Turkey is misplaced. I think we are--we are not dealing with an Islamist administration there, we're actually dealing with, I think, a more moderate administration there, and that's good.

I've got a wee bee in my bonnet about the attitude of the European Union to Turkey. I think it's perhaps criminally irresponsible the way the European Union has been treating Turkey because Turkey is so significant for our position vis-a-vis the Middle East. I just wish, you know, that the major figures within the European Union would be a bit more sensitive about this. I mean, the comments from Giscard d'Estaing recently were just silly. You know?

So we've got to--we've got to actually build--there are some allies, potentially significant allies in the Middle East, but there are problems with regard to other countries. And, I mean, the parallel that comes to mind, dealing with Palestine and Israel, between the--or the contrast, I should say, not the parallel, between the attitude that Iraq and Saudi Arabia take with regard to, say, the militant elements in Palestine, and contrast that to our own experience, and that indicates where a huge part of the problem lies.

MR. SIKORSKI: Let me take advantage of being chairman and ask you, how significant, in your view, were two developments to the defeat of terrorism in Northern Ireland: Number one, the crumbling of the Soviet bloc and the fact that support was no longer coming from the motherland of the revolution? And subsidiary to that, when was the last shipment of weapons that the IRA, you think, received from outside? And number two, how significant was the growing perception that both sides of the divide in Ireland are becoming parts of the same united Europe?

MIN. TRIMBLE: When was the last shipment of arms the IRA received, I'd say the one that we're absolutely sure of was 1999, a year after the agreement, and it came from Florida. (Laughter.) Now, there are rumors that in 2000 they got a batch of rifles from Russia, but there isn't unanimity amongst intelligence sources as to whether that actually happened or not, so we're not sure about that. We're absolutely sure about the Florida shipments because the weapons turned up in use, and we can tell from the registration numbers that they were manufactured after 1999. And in 1999, a smuggling operation in Florida was broken up.

However, that's just one of those ironic little footnotes to this.

The fall of--the collapse of communism was significant; because before then, the major, really large shipments had come from Qadhafi from Libya of largely Czech weapons that had been supplied to Libya, and I'm fairly certain they wouldn't have been shipped on without a note of approval from somewhere, whether in Czechoslovakia or in Russia or whatever.

So there was an element in that, although I think it's probably true to say that the more significant element, the consequence of the collapse of communism, was just simply more of a moral nature. You know, the triumph of democracy, the failure of revolutionary methods in states helps to undermine the confluence that there might be within the terrorists and their supporting groups, and as to whether revolutionary--or aligning yourself with so-called revolutionary movements, is going to succeed and also, you know, orientate society more towards endorsing democratic methods and approach. So I think I would see that the collapse of the West more in terms of--the collapse, sorry, of communism, the effect of that--more in terms of changing the climate and the political context and, you know, endorsing democracies as the better way of proceeding.

The fact that we're together in the European Union has some significance, obviously. Although I am not sure that it's more significant than the, obviously, the decisions that were taken within the Irish state in 1969, in 1970, as to how to position themselves with regard to the IRA when some people, including cabinet ministers, were effectively suggesting that the Irish state should give support to those violent movements. But the fact that we're together in the European Union does help to change the context and changes popular consciousness, though you'll forgive me for saying that--well, sorry, I should say that my colleague John Hume, who received the Nobel award along with me in 1998, is a very strong advocate of the European Union and passionately believes that the example of Europe was key in changing political attitudes; I'm a little bit skeptical about that.

I think the man on the ground--man on the street is not so much interested about the details of the European Commission and the European Parliament, and I rather suspect that mass foreign travel is more significant in changing communal attitudes. The fact that from both Britain and Ireland, you know, large numbers of people fly to Spain, Greece and Turkey for their summer holidays, and thus experience different cultures and different, you know, nationalities and, you know, I think puts our differences into perspective. So I think that's more likely to have changed popular attitudes.

Yeah?

Q I wanted you to talk a little bit about the changing ethnic ratio. How important do you think it is that Catholics or mostly nationalist populace is now about 45 percent of the population in Northern Ireland? Do you that's one contributor, that the Republicans saw a way to achieve their goals through a different means? But now, the ratio may stop rising because more Catholics are in the middle class. Could there be a new campaign because the IRA people--they're not going to outnumber unionists in the near future?

MIN. TRIMBLE: There's a lot of talk about--well, there clearly has been a demographic change because from the 65-35 bounce as it was in 1970, the position that will be repeated by the census taken recently that's about to be published will indicate something in the region of 43-57; 44-, you know, 56, thereabouts, as the balance with --

But the reason why we hear an awful lot said these days about demographic change is that I think, you know, eventually the outset that Republicans realize that they were never going to achieve a united Ireland by democratic means; there was never going to be a majority of people voting in favor of it, so they resorted to violence in order to achieve it. So now when confronted by their grass roots, which say, "Well now, if you've given up violence then you must implicitly have given up all hope of creating--of achieving a united Ireland."

And so the Republican leadership response to that is to say, "Ah, no. No, no. We don't need to use violence now; we're going to achieve it through demographic change," and that is going to result within a generation or two or a decade or two, they say, and they'll be in a situation where they'll win a united Ireland peacefully. So the Republican movement are using this supposed demographic change as a means of, you know, mollifying people who are disappointed at the end of the terrorist campaign, as some are.

Whether the demographic change is likely to occur is extremely doubtful because, you know, even if you just extrapolate out of existing trends, you can construct an argument to say that the Protestant percentage is likely to start rising in the near future because the Catholic birth rate has declined very sharply. And--but, I mean, whatever way it happens--or whatever happens in the near future, the probability is that we're going to see, you know, two communities that are both in the sort of 45 to 50 percent range, and then that's going to, as it were, reflect what we have agreed in terms of the Belfast agreement and its institutions.

I don't see myself any prospect of major constitutional change in the--as far as we can see ahead. So I think the argument about demographic change is largely being used as a diversionary tactic by Republicans to deal with their own internal problems.

Q We seem to be seeing a finger-pointing across the Atlantic on the issue, at least the Europeans are saying, "You're taking the Israeli side"; the Americans are saying, "You're taking the Palestinian side." And we didn't--I mean, correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't recall having seen that sort of thing over the conflict in your area, that each side would accuse the other of taking one side of these talks. To what do you attribute that sort of lessening of the rhetoric on either side, between America and Europe in particular? Not necessarily on the--(off mike)--each side, though.

MIN. TRIMBLE: Well, what we find in terms of the position of Europe and America--if by "Europe" one means the European Union--and America with regard to our situation, yes they are both saying much the same sort of thing. The European Union is saying it much more gently and, actually, you know, proceeding much more gingerly than others.

With regard to the Middle East, well, yes, there's a certain amount of finger-pointing going on on this. But a part from certain small amounts of money which the European Union puts into the Middle East, it's not really a player. I mean, things are said, but I mean, the European Union doesn't actually amount to very much on the international stage. I still recall the time that the European--I'm sorry, the Yugoslav crisis broke early on, and the person who--Luxembourg had the presidency of the council at that stage, and the Luxembourg foreign minister came charging in and saying, "This is hour of Europe." And they're going to do this, that and the other thing. What did they do? They did not do anything of any great value. In fact, if anything, they helped to exacerbate and prolong the problem. And the European Union doesn't seem to be displaying any greater skill with regard to this.

You've got a problem with the French. The French always want to establish a distinctive position of their own, and they always have this tendency of sort of deciding that instead of following a simple clear line, they're always playing at little games around the edges, you know. And you'll always get that with the French, and I think that's just part of the way in which the French try to reconcile themselves to the fact that this is no longer the 18th century and they're no longer the major power in Europe. I mean, that's something that you'll always get with the French.

Most of the other European countries--when you get past the European institutions and the Commission, and you look at what the countries are doing, they're not so much of a problem.

Q But--I'm sorry. In terms of your own area, I mean, do you find them to be difficult --

MIN. TRIMBLE: No, they were very cautious and they tended to focus--the one distinctive contribution that the European Commission made was the development of what they called a special program for peace and reconciliation. That actually only came into the picture very largely after the agreement, and it was more supportive of was was being done, so that they tended to keep away from any sort of direct intervention or finger-pointing at all.

Q Could you talk about the U.S. policy toward Northern Ireland in the last five or six years? (Off mike)--made a positive contribution and where it's been less than helpful in bringing about a solution --

MIN. TRIMBLE: You're tempting me to be undiplomatic, with a camera there! (Laughs.)

The U.S. involvement, particularly in the Clinton years, was high-profile. And there are people who like to think that the U.S. involvement during the Clinton years was a significant catalyst in terms of doing things.

I mean, I'll say that George Mitchell made a very significant contribution simply in chairing the talks. I mean, if that was all you were looking at, that was a significant contribution, in terms of chairing the talks, because I know just how onerous that job was. I've largely absented myself from many of--most of the sessions, because my nerves couldn't stand it. So I'm not quite sure how George has coped over the period. I couldn't stand the frustration and the boredom. That's why I absented myself from so much of it. (Chuckles.) But George stuck to it manfully and obviously constituted significantly to the outcome.

But that was essentially a role of facilitating, and the stance of the U.S. administration, both the last one and the present one, is that of encouraging and being supportive. Rather than trying to determine policy or to create things, it is essentially a supportive role. And in that respect, it is helpful. There's no doubt it's helpful.

And if there's been one slightly negative element, it's there are lots of people in Belfast who somehow seem to think that Belfast is the center of the world, and what happens there is terribly important. But it isn't really. We may have had an interesting experience over the course of the last 30 years. At the end of the day, we're just a small region with a population of 1.7 million. And it's not--we're not that big a player in anything, and we're not very high--nor should we expect ourselves to be very high--on anybody's list of priorities.

MR. SIKORSKI: I think it could be said of your part of the world, as it's said of mine, that it produces more history that can be--than can be consumed locally.

MIN. TRIMBLE: (Laughs.)

MR. SIKORSKI: Sir?

Q As someone from Northern Ireland who has just returned from vacation there a couple of weeks ago, I was interested in your comments about Belfast being--thinking to being the center--(off mike). When you talk to people there--(off mike)--people think that there's nothing else going on. Well, people--there's kind of a conflict there. People are very knowledgeable about what's happening in the rest of the world, much more so than the average American. But they're also very kind of self-centered about what's happening in Northern Ireland.

But apart from that, I have a question for you. There's some discussion here in the United States now about forming an internal security system similar to or, I guess, a parallel to the MI5 in Britain. And this would mean splitting up the FBI in some form. What are your thoughts on that?

MIN. TRIMBLE: Well, I mean, at home we've got MI5--that's the Secret Intelligence Service--I'm sorry; MI5 is the Security Service--MI6, which is Secret Intelligence Service. We've got police special branches, and you've got a special branch for each police force. There is--in the United Kingdom as a whole, there's over 40. And then there are other, you know, national agencies that are supposed to coordinate this and, you know, that and all the rest of it.

And you keep getting rivalries between different organizations, and we had quite often serious problems about getting one intelligence agency to work with another. Because intelligence agencies horde information and only trust themselves and don't trust anybody else, and none of them are actually perfect in terms of what they're doing.

Anyway, so I would be a little bit cautious about the proliferation of agencies, but then, I don't know enough about structures in the United States to put it more than a general caution. You do need to have very close coordination with this new--you've got to stop these agencies becoming, you know, too obsessive about their own structures.

But at the same time, you've got to have people who can operate in a locality. I mean, in Northern Ireland regularly, you know, MI5 would be--and particularly the army intelligence agencies would be bringing people in from outside who stuck out like a sore thumb, and whose skill in terms of dealing with local people was limited. And so--and I hope it's not just a local, you know, regional pride that leads one to say that it was actually Northern Ireland Police special branch which turned out to be most significant in terms of dealing with us, because they were better at running agents because they spoke the same language, understood a lot of the same culture.

So you've got to have respect for those local particularities. Somebody who's coming in from outside who doesn't understand all those particularities and doesn't respect the local culture isn't going to be as successful. So you've got to have a degree of sensitivity to local cultures.

So that may not be a problem with regard to the United States as a whole, but there are elements of, you know, different cultures, particularly when you consider the threat and where the threat comes from. You've got to have people who understand the local culture and have a sensitivity towards it.

Q If I may, you've made a powerful argument for the Department of Homeland Security. But there is another concern that people here have, namely, that the FBI is essentially a law enforcement agency, and that it's institutional culture is to pursue culprits once they've committed a crime. Now, do you think you need another agency, a domestic intelligence agency, which would sometimes act on information before a crime has been committed.

MIN. TRIMBLE: Well, this gets quite difficult, actually, because there is a huge tension between an approach which is intelligence- driven and an approach which is crime-driven. Now, when I say an approach that's intelligence-driven, it's an approach where the key thing is the acquisition of intelligence so that you can understand the organization that you're dealing with and you can identify people that are there.

In terms of the situation we had, the approach was, after some hesitancy, essentially intelligence-driven. It's only in recent years we're switching from an intelligence model back to a crime model. And so for the last--you know, if you deal with the last sort of 15, 20 years or so--because it was intelligence-driven, the key thing was to identify the key players in the organization. Not to arrest them, but to identify them. Because if you used your information simply to--you find someone, get evidence and arrest them and charge them, you take them out of that position, someone else new comes in and you then have to go through a prolonged hunt to find out who the new person is.

So you're actually--if you're thinking of trying to disrupt the activities of the organization, there's an argument which says that you're more successful leaving people in position and monitoring them and disrupting their activities. Because once they're in position, you know where they are.

We were helped in that respect by the increasing centralization of the IRA. The more centrally directed it became, the easier it became to penetrate and obstruct it. So a highly decentralized structure, it becomes more difficult to deal with.

But there is this tension between, as I say, an intelligence- driven operation, where your chief objective is to identify who the players are and then make sure they can't do anything, but leave them in their position, or something which is crime-driven, where your primary objective is to get that person, bring them before the court, sentence them, whatever, you know, and take it from there.

Now, the public prefer the crime-driven model, but a lot of the people who regard themselves as experts in antiterrorism will say the intelligence-driving model is better. Now, there's a tension between the two, and how you resolve that will obviously depend on your objectives and on what, you know, the view of the experts and the view against popular opinion.

Q How important has the recruitment of agents been to the success against the terrorists? And could you succeed without being able to recruit people whose hands are actually splattered with blood?

MIN. TRIMBLE: This is a huge problem; this is a huge problem because if you're turning someone inside an organization--or trying to place someone in that organization, then that person has to behalf in the way that the organization--he's never going to continue in the organization if he does nothing or if everything that he does is frustrated. So you've got a problem there. And this becomes particularly--in a liberal democracy, this is a huge, huge problem because the public, quite rightly, don't like the idea of the state conniving in or being involved in, you know, crime. There isn't an easy answer in this one.

Modern methods of surveillance can be actually extremely effective as well. A lot of the intelligence--it's not only just human intelligence; there's an awful lot of electronic intelligence that can be obtained. And as I say, electronic surveillance is extremely sophisticated, extremely sophisticated, particularly in a small society like Northern Ireland where it's fairly easy to build up databases, where it's fairly easy to deal with, you know, to check on--these things are--from a security point of view, these things are great, they are. And they can all be monitored very easily.

Q What are they?

MIN. TRIMBLE: Mobile phone, or what you call a cell phone.

Q You haven't talked very much about the loyalist paramilitaries in Northern Ireland, and I was wondering two things; one, what lessons can we learn from the state's--from the British government's approach to the loyalist paramilitaries? And when you talk about techniques, the republicans always try to charge that there was a lot of collusion between the loyalist paramilitaries and the state. And what do you say to that?

MIN. TRIMBLE: Well, the loyalist--I was dealing with the state's response to terrorism generally in terms of--a lot of what--general comments I made about the extent to which organizations were penetrated actually applies more almost with regard to loyalist paramilitaries. The loyalist paramilitaries were comparatively--were easier for the state to penetrate, and that's the reason why there was a much higher success rate against loyalist paramilitaries than against republican paramilitaries.

And when we say higher success rate, it's just simply in terms of higher percentage of crimes detected and people made amenable. Ninety percent of the murders committed by loyalists have been cleared up. The equivalent figure with regard to republican murders is only about 15 percent.

Q Fifteen?

MIN. TRIMBLE: Fifteen. So, I mean, you know, in terms of state effectiveness, there's a huge gap between it. And the loyalists are--although this term tends to get misinterpreted, so please, I'm using it with an understandable bit of care--loyalist violence is reactive, I mean in the sense that they're opposed to the republicans. It's the republicans who are trying to change the status of the state, and loyalists are opposing that. So that if the threat from republicans declines, then the reason for the existence of loyalist paramilitaries declines. And so in that sense, the measures that are taken to defeat the republican paramilitarism also potentially are effective with regard to loyalist paramilitarism, although the problems there in terms of racketeering and people wanting to maintai--

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