Peace Trembles on the Brink - Ire Tue, 8 Feb 2000 02:50:02 -0500 Via NY Transfer News * All the News That Doesn't Fit source - "Sean MacCoinnigh" SUNDAY BUSINESS POST -- Feb 6, 2000 PEACE TREMBLES ON THE BRINK By Maol Muire Tynan, Parliamentary Correspondent After ten days of intense diplomacy, cajoling, bullying and persuasion, there are fears that short of a miracle conducted by General John de Chastelain, the collapse of the peace process cannot be averted. The government's insistence that the British refrain from suspending the institutions has sent the process into remission, and sustained a fragile hope that the institutions set up under the Good Friday Agreement can be saved. But as optimism runs cold among the most ardent supporters of the agreement it is understood that representatives of the IRA are continuing to meet the general in a bid to allow him deliver a more optimistic assessment than the one he submitted to the Irish and British governments last week. Failure to produce such a report would herald the end of the institutions, a return to direct rule and, ultimately, a possible slide back into violence. "If the institutions go down the tubes, it is the beginning of the end of republicans' engagement. That is how serious it is," one senior republican source said. "It is a very sad story." With the British government determined to save David Trimble's leadership of the Ulster Unionist Party, the Irish government is now investing all its energies in working towards a situation where the general can confirm that decommissioning is being "confronted and dealt with by the paramilitaries". According to senior sources, if the general does manage to report positive progress, the basis for suspending the institutions falls away. If he does not, the gaze into the abyss becomes a fall into the abyss. Last Sunday, with de Chastelain's report on decommissioning just days away, officials from the government travelled to Derry for lengthy meetings over two days with republican leaders. The Bloody Sunday commemoration was taking place, and the Sinn Fein leadership, including Gerry Adams, Martin McGuinness and Gerry Kelly, were in the city. De Chastelain had produced a report that spoke of ongoing negotiations, but could deliver nothing in the line of decommissioning. The new deadline of February 4 was fast approaching in the form of David Trimble's pledge to resign. With the British government preparing to suspend the institutions in order to save the UUP leader, the officials spelled out that they needed Sinn Fein to secure some actual decommissioning or else come up with a scheme outlining the IRA's commitment and intentions, if any, about weapons disposal. Even at this point, it appears, Sinn Fein was not utterly convinced that London would carry out its threat to introduce legislation to bring down the executive, the assembly and other institutions. The leadership appears to have taken the miscalculated view that once the institutions were up and running it would be impossible for Trimble to contemplate walking away from his post as First Minister. "Sinn Fein thought that if David Trimble got into power he would find some method around decommissioning and would not press it to the death. They were in fact outmanoeuvred," said one source. "As far as the British government was concerned, keeping Trimble in power outweighed all other considerations." Suspension of the institutions may represent "a disaster of the greatest magnitude" for the republican movement. But decommissioning remains untenable, since it cannot be sold to the membership, is tantamount to surrender, an admission that the IRA campaign was illegitimate in the first place, and no guarantee against further unionist demands. The IRA simply "will not buy into a gesture", the sources say. As far as the Prime Minister was concerned, if the Taoiseach could procure a commitment to decommissioning and an acceptable timeframe he would put off the suspension of the institutions. Blair, Peter Mandelson and their advisers accepted David Trimble's pledge to resign by lunchtime last Friday, and by the time the Northern Secretary arrived in Dublin on Tuesday the suspension was practically inevitable as far as the British government was concerned. Brand new Minister for Foreign Affairs Brian Cowen strongly disagreed. He and the Taoiseach concurred with the view that Trimble is the only unionist with whom a deal can be cut, but they took strong issue with the imminence of suspension. In his first discussions with Mandelson at Iveagh House on Tuesday, Brian Cowen is understood to have insisted on a breathing space, because the stakes were so high. The governments should not leap over the cliff without wringing the last possible ounce of hope from the situation, he said. If the institutions were suspended it would be extraordinarily difficult to put them together again =AD and decommissioning would certainly not be achieved in their absence. According to Cowen, the only objective assessment of the situation could be made by de Chastelain, based on the Good Friday Agreement. De Chastelain had not reached the point where he could say no more on decommissioning. Mandelson agreed with Cowen, and having secured a few days reprieve, Cowen, the Taoiseach and officials worked into the night and through the next day to secure a new statement from the IRA. While the media flurried outside Government Buildings on Wednesday, awaiting the arrival of Adams, McGuinness and their large retinue, the North's new Finance Minister, Mark Durkan, made a quiet visit to his counterpart Charlie McCreevy in the nearby Department of Finance. Two weeks ago such a visit by the SDLP minister would have served to illustrate the `normality' of governance in Northern Ireland, but by midweek the peace process had again become the focal point of journalists' questioning. Recalling the Mitchell review which paved the way for the establishment of the executive, Durkan said that the Ulster Unionists had left the other parties in no doubt that if de Chastelain's report could not declare progress on decommissioning they would have no option but to walk away from the institutions at the end of January. "Instead of `No guns, no government', we had a promise of `Progress in government, progress on guns'," Durkan said. "[The UUP] were not going to say they did not need `product', and I do not think their position was tied to getting product ... Equally, Sinn Fein stressed that they could not give actual decommissioning by that date." Late on Thursday night in Cornwall the Taoiseach briefed the Prime Minister on the intensive discussions he had had with Sinn Fein. According to government sources, the value of travelling to England lay in the fact that he could personally reiterate the need to allow more time for de Chastelain. Though republican sources insist that there will be no decommissioning, the government retains a semblance of hope that something will emerge to save the agreement from destruction. After his baptism of fire this week, just days after his appointment as successor to David Andrews, Cowen travels in hope. "I am determined to continue. It is absolutely vital that we succeed in dealing with this issue now, because it has had a retarding effect on the process, and we want to see the Good Friday Agreement implemented in full," Cowen said. "The agreement is a unique opportunity to allow politics to be paramount, and to allow real democratic development to take place without violence or the threat of violence." ================================================================= NY Transfer News Collective * A Service of Blythe Systems Since 1985 - Information for the Rest of Us 339 Lafayette St., New York, NY 10012 http://www.blythe.org e-mail: nyt@blythe.org ================================================================= nytire-02.08.00-02:50:04-7235