Friends of the Union

Friends of the Union has been linked to the leaking of a draft Framework Document in the early stages of the Irish peace process.

Last night it was becoming clear that a caucus of fervent Loyalists under the umbrella of a Unionist study group is closely associated with the leaker. It is made up of PR man David Burnside, D'Ancona himself; Dean Godson, a Daily Telegraph staff reporter; Paul Goodman, Northern Ireland correspondent on the Sunday Telegraph; Noel Malcolm, a historian and Daily Telegraph political columnist; Andrew McHallam, executive director of the Institute for European Defence and Strategic Studies; Charles Moore, editor of the Sunday Telegraph; Simon Pearce, a Conservative election candidate; company director Justin Shaw and historian Andrew Roberts. One of the group said last night: 'We didn't want the position when the framework document was published of being out in the cold as we were over the Anglo-Irish Agreement in 1985. There was a coming together of minds over what should be done.'

The Irish Government viewqed the leak as an attempt to damage the peace process.

Irish ministers and Opposition leaders moved swiftly to attack the credibility of the Times's claim that joint authority is to be proposed by the planned framework document on the future of Northern Ireland. The Taoiseach, John Bruton, openly challenged the motives for the leaking of parts of the document. He said it was clearly an attempt at news management designed to upset one side and was not the work of anyone who wanted to develop the peace process.