Mandelson's decision to suspend the Assembly was met with outrage by most all sections of Irish nationalism. Many concluded that there had been a secret deal made between Mandelson and David Trimble, leader of the UUP, late last year. This, in November of 1999, is when Trimble agreed to form the Assembly's Executive with Sinn Fein, although with a crucial condition: the IRA must begin disarming by the end of January, or Trimble would resign as First Minister and bring down the Executive.
Trimble claimed that this condition was necessary to gain the support of the UUP's governing council for forming the Executive prior to IRA disarmament. Perhaps he was right, for even with this condition he still only garnered 58% support from the UUP council at its November meeting. Nonetheless, Sinn Fein warned that this condition was unacceptable, that it was outside the terms of the Good Friday Agreement all the parties had signed up to, and that these sorts of demands made it all the less likely that the IRA would start to disarm. They were right too, as January came and went and the IRA did not begin disarming.
This brought the situation to a head. With another meeting of the UUP Council coming up on February 12, Trimble appeared committed to honoring his pledge to resign from the Executive. The first couple of days of February saw furious negotiations and meetings between the various sides, as they tried to come up with a formula to satisfy everybody. This proved impossible.
On February 3, Mandelson began the process of introducing legislation in the British House of Commons that would allow him to suspend the institutions of the Good Friday Agreement and reimpose direct rule from London, thus making Trimble's resignation unnecessary. A suspension, the theory went, would allow the Executive and the Assembly to be restarted easily if the decommissioning impasse was later solved. Without suspension, Trimble would resign and the Executive and the Assembly would be rendered unworkable even if this impasse was eventually solved.
The legislation process took one week, and Mandelson made it clear the IRA had this long to deliver a satisfactory position on its disarmament or the institutions would be suspended. On February 11 the suspension went into effect, one day before Trimble's meeting with the UUP Council.
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