Guilt by Association Tars Sinn Fein

Among the Sinn Fein delegates to peace talks here are men like Joe Cahill who bring intimate knowledge of the Irish Republican Army’s ways of war.

Cahill, 77, an affable, grandfatherly figure among nearly two dozen Sinn Fein delegates at the talks, was sentenced to death more than half a century ago for the murder of a police officer in Belfast.

His sentence commuted three days before the scheduled execution in 1942, Cahill became chief of staff of the IRA in the 1970s, security sources say. In 1973, he was arrested aboard a trawler loaded with weapons being smuggled to the IRA. Later, he reportedly became IRA treasurer.

On Monday, he was a senior Sinn Fein figure as the party, led by its president, Gerry Adams, made its formal debut at the talks in this provincial capital.

Is Sinn Fein, as it professes, a democratic political party committed to negotiations as the best way to heal the wounds of a bleeding province? Or is it a sheep’s guise for wolves, using negotiations as tactical prelude to renewed violence?

Those questions are key to the future of talks that ended their first week’s sessions Wednesday with key Roman Catholic and Protestant leaders as far apart as ever on substance.

They weren’t even talking directly--but at least they were in the same building, a major victory for sponsors Britain and Ireland and the talks’ American chairman, former Sen. George Mitchell.

David Trimble led the largest Protestant party back into the talks Wednesday, a day after a terrorist bombing that he blamed on the IRA savaged the heart of a rural village near the Irish border.

The IRA denied responsibility for the bombing, which security forces suspect was the work of a republican splinter group that may--or may not--have staged the attack with at least IRA acquiescence. There were no serious injuries in the blast.

On Wednesday, Trimble, who says there is no difference between Sinn Fein and the IRA, and who skipped the first two days of talks in protest, came out swinging.

“We have no illusions about the character of Sinn Fein,” he said. “We will not run away from them. We are not here to negotiate with them, but to confront them--to expose their fascist character.”

Trimble’s Ulster Unionists, the largest vote-getters among the province’s Protestant majority, were joined by two small parties--the Ulster Democratic Party and the Progressive Unionist Party--that are associated with pro-British paramilitary groups.

Said Adams, “I hope they are here to come into the room with the rest of us and stop this playacting.”

Sinn Fein was admitted to the talks for the first time after an IRA cease-fire declared in July.

Trimble does not believe that Sinn Fein should be included.

He made the point to British and Irish officials, and he did not attend a plenary session of a conference that officials hope will grow to include 10 parties representing the gamut of political opinion in the divided province. Talks resume Monday.

Adams insists that Sinn Fein and the IRA are separate organizations: one a democratic political party, the other a group that wages armed struggle in a just cause.

There is no “organic” policy connection, he said after Sinn Fein ratified democratic principles last week and the IRA expressed grave reservations about them two days later.

Britain and Ireland say that Sinn Fein and the IRA are two sides of the same coin and cannot pursue separate policies.

Both organizations seek the same goal that the IRA has always sought: the union of Northern Ireland with the Irish Republic.

The difference today, Adams says, is that Sinn Fein seeks those goals exclusively by democratic means.

The distinction is greeted with incredulity by Sinn Fein’s critics.

The majority of Sinn Fein supporters and their peace delegates have no ties with the IRA, but the party leadership has close links, analysts insist.

Adams himself, a reputed former IRA Belfast commander who was interned by the British in the 1970s, is scored by Protestants and disaffected IRA hard-liners who recall his 1986 promise that “if at any time Sinn Fein decide to disown the armed struggle, they won’t have me as a member.”

The party’s No. 2 leader, Martin McGuinness, was twice convicted of IRA membership and has been named by British newspapers as a member of the IRA’s ruling Army Council. He denies it.

Gerry Kelly, another prominent Sinn Fein delegate this week, was jailed for bombing the Old Bailey courthouse in London in 1973 and led a mass breakout of IRA prisoners a decade later, during which he shot and wounded a prison guard.

“Everybody of prominence in Sinn Fein springs originally from the other wing of the family,” said Eamonn Mallie, a Belfast journalist who has written two books about the IRA. “You can’t be a boss of Sinn Fein if you haven’t earned your epaulets.”

Ruth Dudley Edwards, an Irish historian active in the peace movement, said, “The IRA is the board of directors, and Sinn Fein is the managing director.”

Whatever else he may be, Adams is a supreme political strategist. He needs at least talking space between Sinn Fein, which won nearly 17% of the vote in elections for peace-talks delegates, and the IRA for a number of reasons, analysts say.

One reason is that it is illegal to be an IRA member; proclaiming membership carries the risk of arrest. Another reason is that the assertion of difference, exemplified by the IRA’s defiant stand last week against arms surrender, may calm IRA hard-liners who still prefer guns to talks.

“Sinn Fein and the IRA are inextricably linked, and there is cross membership at senior levels. The distancing has been for political convenience,” said Michael Page, a security policy analyst at Bradford University in England.

Protestant parties whose hatred for the IRA is unrelenting would risk grass-roots revolt if they talked directly to the extremists.

It might be possible for Trimble, though--after denouncing Sinn Fein as the IRA at every opportunity--to still confront it on political terms across the peace table. On the Protestant side of the talks, delegates of small Protestant loyalist groups are as close to Protestant paramilitary forces as Sinn Fein is to the IRA.

What is clear to all the parties as they edge into the talks is that the overwhelming majority of people in the Catholic and Protestant communities want talks--and peace at the end of them. One poll of Northern Ireland’s residents found 93% favoring negotiations.

If that is the bottom line, then the intricacies of Sinn Fein’s relationship with the IRA are vital to the success of the talks.

“If Sinn Fein is the IRA, then the IRA is in peace talks after all these violent decades. If Sinn Fein doesn’t really represent the IRA, then they’re just another minority political party and there’s not much good they can do for peace,” a senior security analyst noted.