One Word Brings Hope of IRA Disarmament

When British Prime Minister Tony Blair spoke of a “seismic shift” in Northern Ireland politics last week, he was referring to the addition of a single word into talks on disarming militants: “could.”

After insisting for more than a year that it was not able to guarantee Irish Republican Army disarmament, Sinn Fein suddenly said it “could successfully persuade those with guns” to give them up within the time frame set out in last year’s Good Friday peace agreement.

Though Ulster Unionist Party leader David Trimble was unmoved--noting that “could” is conditional and also suggests “could not”--the statement by the IRA’s political ally was enough to convince many observers that a historic shift had occurred among those who long viewed the surrender of weapons as capitulation.

“These guys calculate absolutely everything, so if there is a seismic shift, then it is a very carefully calculated seismic shift,” said an Irish government source close to the negotiations. “I think they are leading inexorably toward producing the goods.”

The reason is that most republicans--hard-line Roman Catholics who want to see Northern Ireland united with the Irish Republic--have become convinced that they are gaining more power and prestige from peace than they ever did from decades of armed struggle.

“In general, the cease-fire card is yielding far better dividends than the bullet and bombs,” said author Tim Pat Coogan, who has written extensively on the IRA.

Sinn Fein leaders Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness, both reputedly former IRA men, have been the main proponents of a republican peace strategy. Over the last 15 years, they slowly but steadily have been pushing the clandestine IRA leaders away from armed struggle and into the legal political arena.

The IRA declared a cease-fire in April 1997, and a year later Sinn Fein signed the Good Friday agreement, which called for the formation of a Protestant-Catholic government in Northern Ireland. Under the agreement, the region would remain part of Britain--as Protestant unionists want--unless voters decide otherwise.

Although union with Britain is anathema to IRA ideology, Adams and McGuinness persuaded their party to go along with the agreement. They argued that they were not giving up the dream of a united Ireland, which 30 years of war and more than 3,500 deaths had failed to bring about. They were simply going after it in a different way.

The accord established several cross-border committees for cooperation between Northern Ireland and the Irish Republic, ensured human rights protections for the province’s Catholic minority and promised a review of the Royal Ulster Constabulary, the predominantly Protestant police force that Catholics consider repressive.

In exchange, the political parties signing the accord agreed to work for the disarmament of Catholic and Protestant paramilitary groups by next May. The IRA is the largest and most heavily armed force.

The peace accord has brought international respect and support for Sinn Fein leaders who, once banned from the United States as terrorists, are now frequent visitors to the halls of power in Washington. In the 1980s, dying hunger strikers were the symbol of the Irish republican movement; today it is Adams as statesman.

The agreement also secured the release of 277 political prisoners, of which 143 were republicans--including icons of the IRA armed struggle such as Patrick Magee, who tried to assassinate British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher in 1984.

But probably the most important advances for republicans, and the ones most likely to keep them on the peace track, have been on the electoral front.

In elections for a new Northern Ireland Assembly in June 1998, Sinn Fein won 18 of 108 seats, becoming the fourth-largest political party in the province. That vote gave Sinn Fein the right to two seats on the 12-member executive, whose formation was called for in the Good Friday accord but has been delayed by unionist demands that the IRA first begin to disarm.

Similarly, Sinn Fein did relatively well in European Parliament elections last month in Northern Ireland and the Irish Republic, as well as in Irish Republic local balloting, which Sinn Fein hopes to parlay into gains in the next Irish parliamentary election.

Sinn Fein’s goal is to increase its presence in the parliaments of both the Irish Republic and Northern Ireland and to use the two governments to bring about unity.

“The electoral results have demonstrated the value of being in politics,” said a Sinn Fein source. “There is no reason for the IRA wanting to go back to war.”

Most Catholics in Northern Ireland, like most of the Protestants, also do not want to go back to war. The Good Friday accord has brought a degree of calm and stability to Northern Ireland unknown for nearly two generations.

Peace also has been good for Catholic businesses. Restaurants and shopping centers are full. There is a night life in Belfast, the provincial capital, and a deep desire among most residents to live as other Europeans do.

But the men with guns had resisted the call for disarmament until Sinn Fein signaled a change last week. Blair, Irish Prime Minister Bertie Ahern and Canadian Gen. John de Chastelain, head of the independent disarmament commission, now are convinced that the republican movement is serious about giving up the guns.

Now the problem is to persuade Trimble’s unionists that a real shift has taken place. For the unionist leader the word “could” in reference to disarming is not enough. He wants guns on the table before Sinn Fein takes seats of power--or at least a commitment from Blair that Sinn Fein would be expelled from government if the IRA failed to disarm.

Blair and Ahern have proposed forming a power-sharing executive by Thursday that includes Sinn Fein, with disarmament to begin “within weeks.” The prime ministers believe that the IRA will give up its guns by May.

Trimble--the province’s “first minister”--has yet to sign on to the latest plan, and he might not. Sinn Fein leaders say they are perplexed by the unionists’ resistance, and Blair sounds exasperated.

“In all their history, republicans have never agreed to decommission,” Blair wrote in London’s Sunday Times this week. This plan, he insisted, “can now deliver it.”