A Council of the Islands of Britain and Ireland

In the wake of the paramilitary ceasefire in Northern Ireland, the new government in the republic of Ireland and the £231 million European Union commitment to the peace process, it is timely to consider strategic options for the region.

A model worthy of attention is an inter-parliamentary and inter-ministerial Council of the Islands of Britain and Ireland. This could evolve from four sources into a substantial trans-insular framework:

- the Anglo-Irish Inter-governmental Conference,
- the British-Irish Inter-parliamentary Body,
- the Forum for Peace and Reconciliation, and
- the proposed all-party talks at Stormont.

Indeed, in Europe there is already a suggestive model, highlighted by the recent entry of Sweden and Finland into the EU. The Nordic Council, comprising five nations and three autonomous regions, has been operating as a parliamentary and ministerial body since 1952. It has effectively buried the territorial disputes which used to be endemic in the Scandinavian peninsula.

Thanks to the co-operative work of the council, this former conflict zone has been transformed into a highly successful network of trans-national communities. Of particular relevance has been the establishment of Europe's first two 'demilitarised' zones - the Spitsbergen and the Aland Islands, the latter once bitterly contested between Sweden and Finland.

If an analogous council could be developed on these islands, might there not be a pressing case for declaring Northern Ireland Europe's third such zone - possibly to be followed by other intractable trouble spots, like Gibraltar and Cyprus? A neutral region in a new Irish-British political dispensation.

Removal of all weaponry from Northern Ireland should assuage one of the most vexed concerns of the two communities - security. But it would necessitate movement beyond the increasingly obsolete ideology of exclusive, indivisible national sovereignty. A major root of the conflict, now widely acknowledged, is the irreconcilable clash between two mutually exclusive claims for sovereignty over one territory. Absolutist sovereignty claims will have to be transcended if a lasting settlement is to be secured.

In this sense, neither a United Kingdom nor a united Ireland is workable in the long term. Hence the timeliness of the Downing Street Declaration's implied intention to amend articles 2 and 3 of the republic's constitution and the Government of Ireland Act of 1920. The logical solution is for both governments to agree effectively to supersede their respective claims to unitary sovereignty, and to work towards a council embracing the 'totality of relations', in the resonant phrase which initiated the British-Irish rapprochement in 1980. This would be facilitated by appropriate devolved governance operating under the principle of 'subsidiarity'.

That is, Northern Ireland could take its place alongside Scotland, Wales and a suitably devolved Irish republic and England. Each unit would function with the appropriate degree of autonomy, with the council providing a co-ordinating and mediating role where necessary - for example, in managing fishery and pollution in the Irish Sea, a British-Irish electricity and gas connector, or inter-regional trade, tourism and cultural exchanges. (It is worth noting that there are now probably as many people of Irish extraction living in Britain as there are in Ireland.)

What is asked for is not a unilateral surrender, but rather a shifting, of power - primarily downwards a subsidiarity indicates) to regions and localities, but in some cases upwards to the trans-national council.