MARTIN McGuinness was drafted in to broker a peace deal between the SNP and the UK Government following a bitter recent fall-out, a former Northern Ireland First Minister has claimed.
Lord David Trimble said the row between Edinburgh and London had been sparked during joint ministerial council (JMC) between the devolved administrations and UK ministers.
The Nobel peace prize winner said that as the meeting descended into "a lot of shouting, a lot of bad blood", representatives from Westminster called upon Mr McGuinness to resolve the dispute.
But the claims have been dismissed by the SNP, with sources claiming there had never been any tensions at JMC meetings it attended and said Lord Trimble's anecdote was "an invention".
The source said: "Nothing like this 'lot of shouting, ranting and roaring', has ever happened at JMC meetings we have been involved in."
Lord Trimble was leader of the then largest party in Northern Ireland, the Ulster Unionists, in the first power-sharing government in 1998, months after the Good Friday agreement.
Lord Trimble told The Guardian's Henry McDonald: “I heard recently from a very senior government minister in Downing Street that they had to call in McGuinness last year to act as a peacemaker between London and the Scots Nats!
“On the joint ministerial council between the devolved governments of Edinburgh, Cardiff and Belfast, in co-operation with the national government in London, there was a lot of shouting, a lot of bad blood. It was caused by the Scottish nationalists roaring and ranting against central government representatives who eventually called in McGuinness for help.
“By contrast Martin McGuinness was calm and rational, and he helped turn down the temperature at that meeting.”
But a spokesman for First Minister Nicola Sturgeon said: "This suggestion is complete and utter nonsense - it is a fantasy concoction of events which simply didn't take place, from someone who wasn't present at any of the meetings the claims are based on."
Following yesterday's death of Mr McGuinness it emerged that Lord Trimble had written to him after learning of his illness to tell him of his appreciation for his peace process work and how many would feel "greater optimism" if he was "at the helm" in the current political crisis.
In the letter Lord Trimble spoke of his "appreciation" for the Sinn Fein veteran's work in bringing devolution to the Northern Ireland Assembly.
He said: "On reflection, I thought it behoved me as the First Minister when we first achieved devolution to the Assembly created by the Good Friday Agreement some eighteen years ago, to say how much we appreciated all that you did to make that happen.
"In doing that you reached out to the Unionist community in a way some of them were reluctant to reach out to you.
"Without knowing the detail of how the republican movement moved to that point, I and my colleagues believed that you were indispensable."
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