Mr. Gerry Adams:

First, I do not think Albert Reynolds gets the credit he deserves for the positions he took up. I said this to him personally and we said it publicly, and he acknowledged it, because, if Deputy Smith recalls, he set up a process where the British had to clarify elements of the Downing Street Declaration and Sinn Féin held a special conference which became known as the Letterkenny conference where we looked at some of the extra information that we received. You could, if you wished, look at all of these steps along the way and say these were steps towards this agreement. They are steps towards an agreement or towards wherever we happen to be at this time in the absence of a strategy. These are things the Government stumbled into or was forced to take up. The Government did its best and many of the taoisigh I met were very well-intentioned. Just because a British minister says he has no selfish strategic interest does not mean he has no strategic interest. Peter Brooke was the first one and this was one of my first instances with Mr. John Hume, where Mr. Brooke said they had no selfish strategic interest, but he did not say they had no strategic interest. I think all of that is past and they now clearly are being moved to a position they have been moved to due to the collective efforts of everyone involved.