Unionist anger over Bloody Sunday claims

Unionists have reacted angrily to claims contained within a new book on the Northern Ireland peace process.

Former Downing Street chief of staff Jonathan Powell's memoirs, serialised in the Guardian newspaper this week, revealed that Sinn Fein had felt the Saville Inquiry into Bloody Sunday was not necessary, while he also said the republican party had been talking to the DUP from 2004.

It was revealed last month that the now 10-year-old judicial inquiry into the 1972 shooting of 13 unarmed protesters by British troops in Derry has so far cost taxpayers £181m.

However Powell, one of the former prime minister Tony Blair's closest allies and who was deeply involved in the peace process, reported that Sinn Fein's Martin McGuinness said he could not understand why Britain set up the tribunal.

"The inquiry... has failed to give satisfaction to either side," Powell wrote.

"The nadir for me was when Martin McGuinness said to me in a private conversation some years later that he didn't know why we had done it: he thought an apology would have been quite sufficient."

Lord Trimble, who was leader of the Ulster Unionists at the time, told the Guardian: "I can remember repeatedly urging Blair not to go down the road to setting up that inquiry and indeed similar inquiries.

"That was done over a period of time, so I am astonished that we have that comment from Martin McGuinness."

Powell also wrote that behind-the-scenes discussions between Sinn Fein and the hardline DUP, now in power together at Stormont, began as early as 2004.

However DUP deputy leader Peter Robinson denied the claim.

"There was no back channel to Sinn Fein at all, not at any point [before March last year]... when a meeting was sanctioned by the party executive.

"Up until that day, we had never had any meeting, under any guise. I had never spoken to Sinn Fein, never met Sinn Fein, until that day."

DUP MP Gregory Campbell added that: "It could well be the case that the government played intermediary, but he's going much further than that, he's suggesting that there was direct back-channel contact between us and Sinn Fein, which there wasn't."