A lively discussion is taking place in the republican movement on how to respond to the Downing Street Declaration. Reproduced here are comments from some respected republicans.
Fr. Des Wilson, a Catholic priest active in the republican community:
"The Reynolds-Major declaration is ... a deeply unsatisfactory and disturbing document. It gives a veto on democracy in Ireland to the British Unionists, the only political party in Europe whose policy is to keep Catholics out of government.
"It aims to remove guns from the republicans and nationalists but to allow their opponents to keep theirs. The declaration says that if ever there is a majority in favour of a united Ireland, the British government will agree to it.
"This is an open invitation to Unionists to make sure that such a majority does not happen, to use those guns to reduce the Catholic population to manageable proportions and keep it there.
"The joint declaration assumes that the elected representatives of the people can be set aside and the people's future negotiated by others whom the people did not elect ... The people of the north-east did not mandate Reynolds, Major or Spring [Irish foreign minister] to negotiate for them. They elected two parties, the SDLP and Sinn Fein, and both of these have now been pushed aside by Major (who got 1.5% of the votes in the north-east), Reynolds (who got no votes) and Spring (no votes).
"Britain's assurance of democratic intentions is destroyed by the fact that while it concedes the right of the Irish people to self-determination, it takes away this right in practice by allowing a well-armed, well-organised British-supported minority, the British Unionists, to have a veto on democracy forever in the future."
Bernadette Devlin McAliskey, republican and former nationalist MP:
"The war has gone on for 25 years. And nobody can say what the balance sheet of suffering is. Certainly the greatest weight has been carried within the republican community. Those of us who have been part of the struggle for 25 years have children. The children have grown up in a totally militarised society. The most alarming thing about the situation is that this is normal life for our children ... Peace is abnormal to anybody in this country under the age of 25.
"There may be some people around who say that anything would be better at this point than seeing these people have to go through the next 25 years the same as ourselves. But that's not our decision. That decision is for people who are 22 and 23.
"And the kids? What they're saying to the leadership is, if you're tired, that's all right. Go home. We're not tired."
Danny Morrison, the former Sinn Fein publicity director and republican prisoner:
The Downing Street Declaration is "a flawed document. The British government has to add to it; they have to say they are going beyond the document.
"What are they going to do to us if we don't accept the declaration, put us in jail? They have tried all the repressive methods and they have failed. We believe that time is on our side and we are not going to abandon the process for real peace for this flawed document, so they are going to have to add to it ...
"The British presence distorts the political landscape ... There's a momentum behind the conflict and nobody can end it until the reasons behind it are resolved. But we have moved forward." — Various sources, via Pegasus.