TOP STORY: NORTHERN IRELAND: Chances for peace slipping away in Ireland

c. 1996 Religion News Service WASHINGTON (RNS)-With the chance of ending a bloody religious and political war in Northern Ireland slipping away, the Clinton administration is engaged in intense negotiations with the British and Irish governments and Northern Irish political factions to restore a 17-month cease-fire and resume peace talks. Political leaders have a week […]

c. 1996 Religion News Service

WASHINGTON (RNS)-With the chance of ending a bloody religious and political war in Northern Ireland slipping away, the Clinton administration is engaged in intense negotiations with the British and Irish governments and Northern Irish political factions to restore a 17-month cease-fire and resume peace talks.

Political leaders have a week or two at best to repair the shattered peace process before it completely disintegrates, according to those close to the negotiations. Now that the outlawed Irish Republican Army has resumed its campaign of terror, Great Britain and Ireland are bracing for retaliations from Protestant paramilitary groups.


The IRA bombing of a double-decker bus Sunday (Feb. 18) in London was the second deadly attack since the IRA called off its cease-fire Feb. 9 (a third bomb, in a London phone booth, was discovered undetonated). The latest bombings have killed three and wounded nearly 100.

The Ulster Defense Association, the outlawed Protestant paramilitary group, scheduled a meeting for Tuesday (Feb. 20) to discuss its Oct. 13, 1993, self-imposed cease-fire.

Gerry Adams, president of Sinn Fein, the political wing of the IRA, wrote in Sunday’s Washington Post that the peace process now required “immense courage and imagination” to regain “what we had 18 months ago, a situation that promised, in the words of Irish poet Seamus Heaney, `a space in which hope can grow.'” Adams, who has said he had no advance knowledge of the renewed bombings, said that peace will come only with immediate talks.

“The attacks show just how ferocious the escalation is about to become,” said U.S. Rep. Richard Neal, D-Mass. Neal has been in contact with the principal players in the peace process, encouraging them to restore the cease-fire and take a seat at the peace table.

Added Rep. Peter King, R-N.Y., who has family in Belfast: “It is very dangerous if it is not resolved soon. The violence could go on for a very long time.” British Prime Minister John Major and Irish Prime Minister John Bruton are expected to meet at the end of this week to try to settle details of a political deal that would include Sinn Fein, the start of all-party talks and the restoration of the cease-fire.

All-party talks would bring to the table representatives of the British and Irish governments along with representatives of each of the political parties in the north. To date, the Protestant Unionists have refused to sit down at the table with Sinn Fein, while Catholics have argued that no real peace plan can come from talks that do not include Sinn Fein.

“The White House, the U.S. Ambassador (to Ireland Jean Kennedy Smith) and the State Department are all working very hard. We are trying to find a way forward,” an administration source said. “We are spending a lot of money on phone bills and jaw time.”


Failure to produce all-party talks within the next two weeks, observers say, would likely lead to a complete collapse of the peace in a Northern Ireland.

Sectarian violence in Northern Ireland has claimed the lives of more than 3,000 Protestants and Catholics in the past 25 years. The conflict has raged over British dominance, nationality, civil rights, and the continuing quest of the Catholic minority in Northern Ireland to reunite their six counties with the mostly Catholic 26 counties of the Irish Republic to the south.

One question looming over the prospect of all-party talks is whether Major wants to make an offer and use his influence to force Protestant Unionists in Northern Ireland to take a seat at the peace table. The Ulster Unionist Party has nine members in the British Parliament. Major, whose own government has a fragile four-vote majority, relies on their support.

In this week’s talks between Major and Bruton, Neal said,”the question is whether Major will play the `orange (Protestant) card’ because they give him the margin.” Added Neal, “We have to push the boulder back up the hill. I have condemned the violence on all sides but I still believe in the principle of unification.” Since the IRA began its cease-fire on Sept. 1, 1994, and the Protestants followed suit on Oct. 13, London and Dublin each had been meeting with all parties, including Sinn Fein, and making incremental advancements toward peace.

But talks deadlocked in September 1995 over London’s insistence that the IRA surrender its weapons before all-party peace talks could commence.

Nonetheless, two days before President Clinton’s Nov. 30 visit to Belfast and Derry last year, the British and Irish governments announced that they would begin all-party talks at the end of this month.


An international three-member commission was assembled about the same time to study the issue of the decommissioning of IRA weapons. The body, chaired by former U.S. Sen. George Mitchell, recommended Jan. 24 that instead of preceding the all-party talks, decommissioning could occur simultaneously with those talks.

Major, however, immediately rejected the Mitchell report and instead demanded that there be elections in Northern Ireland to select delegates for the peace talks. But Catholics, who are a minority, could not see how electing the conferees when the Protestants are the majority could serve their interests, or why that proposal should be taken seriously.

Instead, the proposal was seen as a delaying tactic by Major, and it is now widely seen as the straw that broke the back of IRA patience with a peace process that they had viewed as one delay after another over the last 17 months.

Bruton, the Irish prime minister, rejected the election proposal as “a serious mistake” that would “pour petrol on the flames.”

Five days before the IRA detonated its bomb in London, Mitchell warned the British government that the peace process was in danger of unraveling. U.S. lawmakers and the Irish government, while denouncing IRA violence, have also blamed Major for having a part in undoing the peace process.

Days before and after the bombing, heads of Protestant and Catholic political parties as well as British and Irish cabinet members came to Washington to ask Clinton to use his influence in the peace negotiations.


In its 20-page report, the Mitchell Commission stated that “what is really needed is the decommissioning of mind-sets in Northern Ireland.”

MJP END MORIARTY

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