IRA WATCH : Return of the Troubles

Sinn Fein, a Northern Ireland political party allied with the terrorist Irish Republican Army, on Sunday formally rejected a joint British-Irish declaration that many had seen as the best hope in years for peace in that strife-ridden region.

By the December “Downing Street Declaration,” Ireland agreed that the majority would rule on the political status of Northern Ireland. The United Kingdom agreed that if and when the majority chose union with Ireland, the United Kingdom would not stand in the way. The mostly Protestant unionist population constitutes a clear majority at the moment. Some decades from now the gradually growing, mostly Catholic, Irish nationalist population could become a majority.

All this was just talk, of course, unless the inflamed parties on both sides could see fit to accept this vision of a peaceful, politically open-ended future. Sadly, even the remote prospect of Irish rule brought an immediate escalation in unionist terrorism. More sadly still, the hope that Sinn Fein’s Gerry Adams could bring his party and the terrorist Irish Republican Army to renounce violence and join multilateral (British, Irish, unionist, nationalist) talks has now been utterly shattered.

What next? The hour of Sinn Fein and above all of Gerry Adams would seem to have definitively passed. The path to peace that might have led through Sinn Fein must now lead around it. Adams and his party have, in a strange way, their worst enemies for allies: Only the terrorists on either side want the bloodshed that lies ahead.