Tory peace process record backed

http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/rss/-/1/hi/northern_ireland/6761047.stm

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Former prime minister Sir John Major has hit back at NI Secretary Peter Hain over criticism of the Conservative's operation of the peace process.

Mr Hain had said the Conservative government's failure to read republicanism properly had led to the collapse of the first IRA ceasefire.

However, Mr Major rejected the allegation, saying the negotiations were a complicated balancing act.

He said either unionists or republicans could have collapsed it at any time.

"It was always a process like building a Rubik's Cube that needed all sides to be kept in play," Mr Major told the BBC's Politics Show.

"Any side - the republican side or the unionist side - could have broken the peace process at any moment."

Mr Major said that unionists would never have sat round a table and talked with republicans if they thought republicans were ready to resume violence the moment something went wrong.

"They would never have sat down together, there would have been no peace process surviving," he said.