Wikileaks and us
I can't get on to the Wikileaks site at the moment, presumably because of the sustained cyber attack on the site. But my colleague Jim Fitzpatrick tells me that last night he saw a cable which referred to last year's visit to Northern Ireland by Hillary Clinton. Fairly predictably the cable predicted that the British government would want Mrs Clinton to urge the local politicians to accept what it called the "Westminster package" on devolving justice. "If the agreement is not completed by the weekend" the cable states "there is potential that some of the parties could seek to draw in the Secretary. The best approach is to urge all parties to work together patiently to reach agreement. An agreement would be a strong, positive signal to potential investors."
In the event, in public, Mrs Clinton told the parties devolving justice "is a decision for this assembly to take". However in making it clear that she wanted to see devolution completed she lined up behind the British and Irish position although in a rather more nuanced way than Gordon Brown, who made a rather clunking speech when he addressed the assembly chamber.
Should the Wikileaks site recover, it will be fascinating to see what the Americans were saying during the tense times after the IRA and loyalist ceasefires of 1994. One diplomat who has come in for a great deal of attention in recent days is the US ambassador to South Korea who reported that China might privately be ready to see the unification of Korea under southern control. That report may well be connected to the current cyber attack which some newspapers claim has been launched from China. Back in the mid nineties, Kathleen Stephens was principal officer at the US Consulate in Belfast at the time President Clinton made his first visit to the city. No doubt her cables about the unfolding situation here would have been a good read.
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