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Sinn Fein is committed to promoting and enhancing reconciliation, and in recent years, I and other members of my party have taken a number of significant initiatives aimed to advance this process.
Obviously everybody is accountable for their own actions, and everybody has to make judgments based on their own conscience as to whether or not they believe what they were doing is right or wrong.
The big powers are traveling on the dangerous road of armament. The signpost just ahead of us is 'Oblivion.' Can the march on this road be stopped? Yes, if public opinion uses the power it now has.
I do have a very deep sense of regret that there was a conflict and that people lost their lives, and you know, many were responsible for that - and a lot of them wear pinstripe suits in London today.
It is clear that it is not man who has created the universe - whether you believe in God or in gods or deny any divine presence - man cannot alter the laws that govern the universe without damaging it.
I lost a lot of friends at the hands of the British Army. The person who actually introduced me to my wife, Colm Keenan, was murdered by the British Army. He was a member of the IRA, but he was unarmed.
The task ahead of us will be extremely challenging as the Tory party continue with their austerity agenda and as we continue to resolve the issues of the past and build unity, reconciliation, and equality.
There is not much point in establishing an organisation like the independent commission for information retrieval, or the other organisations that we agreed to, if we do not encourage people to participate.
I think people see me as someone very much associated with political agreement and, probably more than anything else, being able to build a relationship with loyalist leaders Ian Paisley and Peter Robinson.
I don't think the majority of people - to be quite honest - care. I think they see me as someone who was at one stage of my life in the IRA, but they see me in the round, as someone who was able to make peace.
Churches, by the very reason of their structures, are monolithic and do not adapt easily. But in many cases, they, too, have allowed themselves to become allied or even part of an unjust establishment or system.
Sinn Fein is an Irish Republican party. We stood in the Assembly election to deliver a prosperous economy and jobs, to protect and enhance public services, support those most in need, and to progress Irish Unity.
If Britain votes to leave the European Union, then that could have huge implications for the entire island of Ireland and, given all the predictions, would run counter to the democratic wishes of the Irish people.
Along with that ongoing process Sinn Fein took a decision to establish a peace commission which had the responsibility to travel around the country to receive submissions from the general public, also our opponents.
The main thing that endears the United Nations to member governments, and so enables it to survive, is its proven capacity to fail... You can safely appeal to the UN in the comfortable certainty that it will let you down.
The Good Friday Agreement was an incredible breakthrough. But it's my view that the Hillsborough Agreement could see politics in the north come of age, and see us all move forwards on the basis of equality and partnership.
Let me put it like this: I am not prepared to officiate over on behalf of the British government what I think is a disastrous strategy which will impact on some of the most vulnerable and poorest people within our society.
I'm still an Irish republican; I absolutely believe in Irish unity and am working to achieve that. But over the course of 15 years or more, people like myself and others have been working to end the vicious cycle of conflict.
I have passed, I hope, many tests over the course of the last 20-odd years in relation to the peace process and intend to continue to work forward in a very sensible and reasoned way with political colleagues in the Executive.
I am very sure of the ground I stand on. I am also very sure that it is the path shared by republicans across this island genuinely interested in building a new agreed Ireland: republicans who put Ireland before ego, criminality, and self-gain.
Companies have to nurture [creativity and motivation]-and have to do it by building a compassionate yet performance-driven corporate culture. In the knowledge economy the traditional soft people side of our business has become the new hard side.
I remember vividly as a 15-year-old, in 1964, seeing Derry play Glentoran in the Irish Cup Final at Windsor Park in Belfast. Glentoran were one of the two big Belfast teams, along with Linfield. Any rural team playing them was up against the odds.
The people who were marching at Peggy O'Hara's funeral gave the impression they were associated with the INLA, which is supposed to be on ceasefire and to have decommissioned some of their weapons. I ask if they could have honoured her in a more dignified way.
Obviously, Ian Paisley and I were regarded as very bitter opponents. When we decided in March 2007 to govern together, both of us understood that we weren't going to change our views but that we had to work with one another if we were to end the conflict and move forward.
I believed that, in a situation where the community that I came from were being treated like second- and third-class citizens, that I had a responsibility to fight back against it. And I don't apologise to anybody for having done that. I think it was the right thing to do.
When I went to the all-Ireland final - Kerry against Dublin - I couldn't get away for an hour and a half with people coming up and wishing me all the best. Not one of them said, 'Martin, when did you leave the IRA?' But every one of them knew I was in the IRA at one stage.
If the British government is prepared to say that the Unionists will not have a veto over British government policy and that guns, vetoes and injustices will all be left outside the door, then there is no good reason why talks cannot take place in an appropriate atmosphere.
The United Nations cannot do anything, and never could; it is not an animate entity or agent. It is a place, a stage, a forum and a shrine... a place to which powerful people can repair when they are fearful about the course on which their own rhetoric seems to be propelling them.
The engagements I had with Queen Elizabeth and Prince Charles were about reaching out and showing respect to the unionist people. I also recognised that when someone like her makes acts of reconciliation as she did do at the Garden of Remembrance in Dublin, she is 100% behind the peace process.
Bill Clinton was one of the greatest presidents that we've seen. He was involved in the peace process in the very beginning, and he not only showed himself to be knowledgeable about Irish history and Irish-British relationships, but also he was very sympathetic to the idea of resolving conflict.
Within loyalism and the UVF, there are clearly people who are not just aggravated by the issue around flags or parades. They're aggravated by me and Sinn Fein being in government. They're opposed to the political institutions - there's an inability of a minority within loyalism to accept the concept of equality.
Remembering the loss of those Irishmen from all parts of the island who were sent to their deaths in the imperialist slaughter of the First World War is crucial to understanding our history. It is also important to recognise the special significance in which the Battle of the Somme and the First World War is held.
British diplomats, constantly exposed to American political-ethical rhetoric, find their professional skills tested to the limits by the need to keep a straight face. For illustrations of what I mean, study the photographs of the expressions worn by Mr Douglas Hurd at any international conference involving all the Western allies.
I know who Queen Elizabeth represents. I know she's the head of the British state. I know she has all sorts of titles in relation to different regiments in the British army. She knows my history. She knows I was a member of the IRA. She knows I was in conflict with her soldiers, yet both of us were prepared to rise above all of that.
It was traumatic for my children to see the British army en masse coming into our home and searching the house. I recall on one occasion, when our home was raided, my youngest son was standing at the top of the stairs - he would probably have been only three years of age - in his pyjamas. The soldiers came up the stairs, and he peed himself.
Planted by your care? No! Your oppression planted them in America... nourished by your indulgence? They grew by your neglect of them... As soon as you began to care about them, that care was exercised in sending persons to rule over them... men whose behaviour on many occasions has caused the blood of those sons of liberty to recoil within them.
People make a decision on what they take based on whether or not it's legal. We give people at the age of 18 a choice to use alcohol, which is more harmful than cannabis. If they have the choice to use cannabis by legalising it, they'll be less likely to drink alcohol, giving people an option to use a safer drug. If people end up using cannabis instead of alcohol, that would obviously be a good thing.
British rule depends upon repression and collaboration and the Irish people should recognise that those who collaborate with Britain in exchange for a slice of the cake will implement British policy and remain silent when Irish people are murdered and oppressed. It is they who are responsible for prolonging the war in Ireland. Without the quislings, without the collaborators, we would already have reached freedom.