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Writing Peace: The National Archives of the UK (TNA)

Enclosure: Line to Take for Peter Brooke's Meeting with John Hume Regarding the Meeting on 11 January 1991

Thursday, 17 January 1991

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This document provides an outline for Peter Brooke's response to what was discussed by John Hume on 11 January 1991 in his meeting with Danny McNeill and John Chilcot regarding his contacts with Sinn Féin.

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POLITICAL MOVEMENT AND THE PROVISIONALS: MR HUME

Line to take

If Mr Hume asks the Secretary of State for his reactions to what we have been told, he might make the following points in any response:

(i) the open political development must be taken forward, for the sake of the real progress it would represent and because
(ii) it is a major factor in bringing some of the Provisionals to address the possibility of pursuing their ends peacefully.
(iii) However there does not have to be a choice between pursuing political development or pursuing peace. While none of us can perhaps see our way ahead very clearly as yet, it should be possible to weave together the open political process with any serious move towards peace by the Provisionals.
(iv) There can be no question of HMG setting its face against a serious move towards peace. But it will take time. Mr Hume's own efforts at dialogue have run for two years now. It would be wrong to think there was only a brief window of opportunity, and to sacrifice or place at risk through any artificial delay all the progress made so far on political development on that mistaken assumption. Mr Hume understands very well too the acute moral and political difficulties standing in the way of responding to merely partial, temporary or conditional moves towards peace on the part of the Provisionals.