Secretary of State should think before he speaks - Bell

5.47.00pm GMT Sat 7th Jan 2006

Reacting to the Secretary of State's latest threats concerning the restoration of the Assembly, Eileen Bell said that she feels Mr Hain needs to think before he speaks.

Once again we see the Secretary of State using the carrot and the stick, the carrot for the extremist parties at every available opportunity, and the stick for the rest of the population, no matter how reasonable, hard-working or diligent they be.

I am thoroughly fed up witnessing the feeble attempts of Hain trying to buy off the threats of Sinn Fein, and the DUP, while the rest of the population, and their representatives, is totally ignored.

Have Tony Blair and his placemen not learned that their policy of continuous appeasement is not only totally unacceptable to the vast majority of decent people in Northern Ireland, but also that it will never work?

Until the British government starts to stand up to the bully-boy tactics of both extremes, Northern Ireland can only continue its slide into perpetual intolerance and violence!

ENDS