Decommissioning
ultimatum guaranteed to stiffen spines The Hillsborough declaration underlines
how the Irish and British governments have failed to comprehend the psychology
of the republican movement, argues Niall O'Dowd
From IRISH TIMES April 7th, 1999
For a year, they believe, they have seen the two governments wait for David
Trimble at every remove, constantly postponing deadlines as the Ulster Unionist
leader erected obstacles. They are unlikely to oblige Trimble and the governments
now with any rush to meet the latest deadlines. "We lived up to everything we signed up to on Good Friday, and we have had the year-long unionist stall, and we are now being asked to pay the price. There is a deep sense of outrage about that," a leading Sinn Féin official said. But there is also something
more serious arising out of last week's developments. Internally, the Sinn
Féin leadership now faces the spreading belief that the Irish Government
has abandoned them for a dangerous liaison with David Trimble and the wilder
shores of unionism. The major progress in the peace process came when Dublin,
SDLP and Sinn Féin were able to agree elements of a common strategy. That
is where the IRA cease-fires, the bedrock of the peace process, have come
from. The times of difficulty have come, as now, when Dublin appears to
have gone off on the old SDLP/Ulster Unionist/British government tangent,
which failed to bring any permanent measure of peace for a quarter-century.
Fergus Finlay's famous comment that the peace process without Sinn Féin
is not worth a penny candle still holds true today. Bertie Ahern secured
an IRA ceasefire within weeks of gaining office and did a remarkable job
negotiating the Belfast Agreement, so much so that Senator George Mitchell
in his new book nominates him as the hero of that agreement. Perhaps he
sees a way forward from this declaration, but the ill-concealed anger in
republican circles last weekend will be very difficult for him to salve.
These are, undoubtedly, trying times in Northern Ireland and there is undoubtedly
a weariness with the decommissioning issue that straddles all perspectives
and parties. However, the first maxim for government leaders should be to
do no harm, if they can't do good. That, unfortunately, does not appear
to be the case in this instance. Niall O'Dowd is publisher of the Irish
Voice in New York. |
