25.11.1993
A letter from the UK Prime Minister to the Taoiseach November 1993, Catalogue ref: CJ 4/10560
Transcript
10 Downing Street
London SW1A 2AA
The Prime Minister
25 November 1993
Strictly Confidential
Dear Albert
It was good to talk to you last Saturday. I am sorry to have intruded on your weekend off. I hope that you and Kathleen were able to get some relaxation during your trip. If I may say so, I thought your interview with David Frost went very well.
Making no bones about it, we have had an extremely difficult and depressing week. I need not labour the reasons why. I had allowed myself to feel a little optimistic after my meeting with Robin Eames on 18 November. But I am afraid that the following day’s leak and the Hume/Adams statement on Saturday last have had precisely the effect I feared when we spoke on the phone.
I have spent all week trying to repair the damage through a series of meetings and public statements. I fear that I have had only limited success. In the current political atmosphere, there is clearly no hope of securing even tacit acceptance by the Unionist mainstream of a Joint Declaration on the lines of your draft. The text would be seen as deriving from Hume/Adams, and thus would assumed to be the product of negotiation with Sinn Fein. This is an impression which successive statements from Hume and Adams have done nothing to dispel. As we have agreed all along, association with Hume/Adams is the kiss of death for any text intended to secure acceptance on both sides of the Community.