Quill
  1. Overview: Northern Ireland Brooke/Mayhew Talks 1991-1992
  2. Full Record: Northern Ireland Brooke/Mayhew Talks 1991-1992
  3. Committee:Office of the Strand 1 Chairman (British Government Delegation)
  4. Session: 1991-05-28 07:00:00
  5. Event type: CREATE_FROM

Northern Ireland Brooke/Mayhew Talks 1991-1992

WORK IN PROGRESS - IN THE FINAL STAGES OF EDITING A series of talks launched by Peter Brooke, Secretary of State for Northern in Ireland, which began in April 1991, and were carried on intermittently by Brooke and his successor, Patrick Mayhew, until November 1992.

Office of the Strand 1 Chairman (British Government Delegation)

In order to adequately reflect the role of the Chairman and his staff in re-drafting documents and controlling the flow of information during bilateral negotiations, we are representing them as a separate committee. In contrast to other Quill negotiations, in these Talks much of the actual work of negotiation and making proposals took place in bilateral meetings between the Chairman and the party delegations. The minutes of these sessions have been preserved in the same format as the minutes of the plenary sessions, and the sessions are modelled from the minutes as separate Committees (British Government/Alliance Bilaterals, etc.). The Chairman would move between these meetings, reporting on the positions of the other delegations and trying to reach accommodation. It is beyond the scope of the current project to model all the internal government meetings which took place during the Talks (although documentation for at least some of them exists in the National Archives), but we can draw on evidence within the sources we are using to show that proposals and agendas for the bilaterals were agreed within the Government team. For example, in a particular round of meetings, the Chairman will open the meeting with a near-identical agenda and summary of the current position of the other parties. To adequately model the fact that the flow of ideas between the delegations was filtered by the Chairman in this way, we have set up a committee called the 'Office of the Chairman' to show the conclusions of each bilateral discussion passing through the Chairman's Office and being redrafted before being passed on to the next delegation.

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Document introduced in:

Session 12571: 1991-05-28 07:00:00

Creation of the draft Workplan ahead of the sub-plenary meeting

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Procedural Guidelines for the Conduct of Strand Two 9 (Amended 28 May 1991)

There are 0 proposed amendments related to this document on which decisions have not been taken.

(28 May 1991 1715)

Procedural Guidelines for the Conduct of Strand Two*

Role of Chairman

1. The independent Chairman will preside over all meetings of Strand Two. He/she will exercise his/her functions in an impartial and even-handed manner.

2. The Chairman will be responsible for the orderly conduct of business. He/she will conduct the proceedings so as to allow an opportunity for full discussion of the issues and will be guided by the objective that the outcome should be agreed by all participating Delegations. To this end, but only after consultation with the Delegations to establish that it would be regarded as helpful, the Chairman may, with the agreement of one or more Delegations, bring forward specific suggestions.

3. The Chairman will consult with participating Delegations in the exercise of his/her functions. A Business Committee will be formed to facilitate such consultation.

4. The Business Committee will comprise the Chairman him/herself and a designated member of each of the participating Delegations. The Committee will be available to advise the Chairman on the day-to-day- exercise of his/her responsibilities and to facilitate communication between the participating Delegations and the Chairman. It is envisaged that the Committee will normally meet on days when talks are taking place.

5. In discharging his/her functions, the Chairman will confine his/her consultations to the Delegations participating in Strand Two. Any written submissions which may be received from other groups or individuals will have no status.

6. For the duration of the process the Chairman will not be expected to make any public comment. However, should the need arise, he/she will wish to seek the approval of the heads of participating Delegations before doing so.

Conduct of Proceedings

7. The proceedings of Strand Two will be held in private.

8. The Chairman will have responsibility for the convening, postponement and adjournment of meetings, in consultation, as he/she considers appropriate, with participating Delegations. It is understood, however, that any Delegation may request an adjournment of up to 10 minutes at a time and the Chairman shall only refuse such requests if they are made with unreasonable frequency.

9. The agenda for each day’s business shall be determined by the Chairman after considering advice from the Business Committee.

10. In addition to the meetings in London and Dublin, other substantive meetings of Strand Two will also take place in plenary session at Stormont. There will also be non-plenary meetings between the Chairman and all, some or any of the Delegations should he or the Delegation(s) concerned require it.

11. All remarks shall be addressed through the Chairman. Time limits on interventions may be imposed at the Chairman's discretion.

12. The Chairman's ruling on all individual questions of procedure and order shall be final.

13. A record of the proceedings of Strand Two will be maintained under the general direction of the Chairman and circulated to Delegations participating in the meeting. Approval of the records of meetings will be a matter for the Business Committee.

14. Changes and additions to these rules of procedure shall be made only with the agreement of all participating delegations.

Inter-relationship of Strand Two with Strands One and Three

15. The last plenary meeting in strand two also provides an opportunity for any of the participating parties to put to the Governments their views on Strand Three issues.

16. It is accepted by all participating Delegations that nothing will be finally agreed in any strand until everything is agreed in the talks as a whole.

*Note: for the purpose of this document, the term "participating Delegations" refers to the two Governments and the four Northern Ireland parties: Alliance, SDLP, UDUP, UUP.

[Editor's Note: In the hard copy version of the document, this note appears at the end of page 1 (of 3).]

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