NEWS ANALYSIS : Frustration, War-Weariness Led to IRA Move

Within a few hours of the Irish Republican Army’s cease-fire announcement Wednesday, the leader of the group’s political arm was extolling the sacrifice and dedication of those who had fought to end British rule in Northern Ireland.

“This is a generation of men and women who’ve fought the British for 25 years and have not been defeated by them,” Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams told a group of cheering supporters in the party’s Northern Ireland stronghold of West Belfast.

While Adams is certainly correct that neither the presence of 18,000 British soldiers nor one of the best-trained, best-armed civilian police forces anywhere could crush the IRA’s capacity to kill, the whole truth is more complicated.

Indeed, for many of those most familiar with the rhythm of violence that has been a part of Northern Ireland for the last quarter-century, it was the IRA’s sober assessment that it had failed to make any real headway toward its goal of wresting Ulster from British rule in its long campaign that played a key role in Wednesday’s decision to give up its armed struggle.

There was also a very personal motivation on the part of IRA activists to halt their campaign: While many key figures in the guerrilla army first became active when they were teen-agers, the ensuing 25 years had seen them become fathers of children who are themselves now at an age to become involved in the bloody struggle.

According to those close to the republican movement, few of the hard-core activists wanted their children to lead similar lives.

This war-weariness is reflected, analysts say, in the fact that it was Sinn Fein, not the British government, that initiated the back-channel contacts that first began between them early last year.

Some analysts also argue it is significant that the cease-fire reserved no right of reprisal to possible Protestant extremist attacks and that Adams has asked for no amnesty for the estimated 400 republican prisoners in British and Ulster jails.

Instead, his demand has been that those prisoners in Britain be returned to Northern Ireland.

Other factors besides IRA weariness also played a role. Among them:

* Over a period of time, activist members of Ulster’s Roman Catholic, Irish nationalist minority gradually came to realize that a lasting peace settlement could be achieved only with the consent of the Protestant majority.

John Hume, leader of moderate nationalist opinion, was the first adherent of this belief--which gradually spread through the senior ranks of the Irish government in Dublin and eventually seeped into the thinking of the IRA’s political wing, Sinn Fein.

Adams, who has met with Hume often in recent months, is now willing to take part in talks that would lead to a settlement acceptable to all strands of Northern Ireland society.

(Hume on Wednesday was among the most vigorous in insisting that the IRA cease-fire is a permanent one. “I see the statement as a complete cessation of violence,” he said. “Complete means complete.”)

At the same time, moderate Protestant leaders realized that the political constituency represented by Sinn Fein had to be recognized and, therefore, included in any settlement.

As positions narrowed, the only real prerequisite to sit at a peace table became an unequivocal renunciation of violence.

* For British Prime Minister John Major, the time was also ripe; going for an Ulster settlement by stating his willingness to sit down with Sinn Fein certainly is a political gamble for him but one that has become increasingly attractive.

Major’s personal image and his party’s popularity are both near all-time lows. Playing the pivotal role in bringing peace to Northern Ireland would give his stock a major boost. Failure could hardly send it lower.

While the absence of the word permanent to describe the cease-fire in the IRA statement and the debate surrounding its absence is a setback to Major, he brushed aside questions in a television interview.

“What concerns me is ending bloodshed on the streets of Northern Ireland after 25 years that has too often spilled over into the (British) mainland as well,” he said. “It’s time to end that and begin a new future.”

* The attitude of a new Democratic Administration in Washington is also believed to have been a factor. The Clinton Administration was interested in playing a low-key role to nudge the talks forward and gained credibility as a mediator within the IRA by allowing senior republican figures to travel to the United States.

Trips by Adams earlier this year and by well-known IRA activists Joseph Cahill and Pat Treanor this week are believed to have boosted the IRA resolve to go forward with the cease-fire. In each of these instances, President Clinton reportedly personally approved the decision to grant the visa.

While these circumstances have opened the door to the real possibility of peace for the first time in a quarter of a century in Northern Ireland, the road to a final settlement remains littered with far more questions than answers.