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: 1992-06-12 09:10:00
  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 14319: 1992-06-12 09:10:00

Consultations regarding transition to Strands II and III.

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Statement to the Plenary (12 June 1992)

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

[Editor's Note: We only have the final agreed text of this statement, so we have worked back from it using the descriptions of the amendments made at each stage. The text below is therefore only a provisional version.]

[DRAFT STATEMENT TO PLENARY 12 JUNE 1992

1. I am not yet proposing the transition to Strand II. However, the delegations have agreed on the next steps in the process of the Talks.

2. In the light of exchanges between the Party leaders, I am asking the Irish Government to join with me in inviting Sir Ninian Stephen to convene a meeting next week, to which he would invite representatives of the two Governments and of the four Northern Ireland political parties participating in the Talks, to discuss a possible agenda for Strand II of the Talks.

3. I am also proposing that the two Governments should hold a meeting in Strand III formation which observers from each of the Parties will be invited to attend for at least part of the time, to give preliminary consideration to the issues likely to arise in that Strand.

4. In the meantime, I am also proposing that the sub-Committee should be invited to continue its work, concentrating in particular on the points listed in paragraph 8 of the sub-Committee's report of 10 June.]

Decisions yet to be taken

None

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