The man who helped broker the Good Friday Agreement, Senator George Mitchell, has spoken out in defence of the peace process but issued a warning that only full implementation of all key issues could pave the way forward for Northern Ireland.

Speaking in New York on Monday 10 September, the man who chaired the negotiations which brought about the 1998 peace accord, said he was confident the Northern Ireland peace process could survive.

However, speaking as he delivered a lecture in St Bartholomew’s Episcopal Church in Manhattan, Mr Mitchell stressed that his report, which helped bring about the GFA, “stated clearly and explicitly total disarmament of all paramilitary organisations."

The former US senator, George Mitchell said the total disarmament of all paramilitary organisations is an “explicit part” of the Good Friday Agreement.

He said he believed that people in the province did not wish to return to conflict but as the recent events in Ardoyne showed, there was still pockets of deep sectarian hatred: "I think most people in both communities want their difficulties sorted out by peaceful democratic processes, not by bombs and bullets.”

“Today there remain very difficult issues of implementation, as anyone who has seen a newspaper or seen the television news in the last week can attest. Despite the continuing difficulty of implementation, I believe that the path to peace has been irreversibly set.”

Mr Mitchell emphasised that the Agreement was a complete package and could not be “implemented selectively.”

“The Good Friday Agreement contains a lot of recommendations and is a single entity,” he said. "Integral to the premise of the agreement was that it has to be implemented in full. It was not a selective agreement. There are three major issues - decommissioning of weapons, policing and demilitarisation. There has to be progress on all of them.

"People do not want to go back but they do not want to give in. The challenge for all political leaders is to reconcile these conflicting demands."

Richard Haass, George W Bush’s special envoy to Northern Ireland, is currently visiting the province for talks with the political parties on the peace process. He met with the Secretary of State Dr John Reid in London on Monday.

The Northern Ireland Assembly has a duty to reinstall David Trimble or install a new leader by September 22. Failure to do so will precipitate a crisis forcing Dr Reid to either call fresh elections or suspend the assembly for a second time since taking up his post in Northern Ireland. (AMcE)