Ahern and Blair may seek interim agreement to keep Executive alive If Blair and Ahern broker a deal today with Northern leaders, it is likely to be a holding operation until after the UK general election, writes Frank Millar
From IRISH TIMES March 8th, 2001
Is the Belfast Agreement really in crisis and under immediate threat? The
answer might seem self-evident, given the continued frenzy of negotiation
in an effort to resolve - or, at any rate, advance in a convincing manner
- the inter-connected decommissioning, demilitarisation and policing issues
which have for so long threatened the accord. The presence of the Taoiseach
and the British Prime Minister in Belfast today will signal some game finally
in play in the roundtable format proposed by the SDLP. Given their "standby"
state over recent weeks, however, few will believe it until Mr Ahern and
Mr Blair finally touch down at Hillsborough. An outstanding feature of the
current negotiation has been deadlines set and disregarded. In assessing
the likely outcome of any talks, moreover, it is worth recalling that the
original deadline for this negotiation was President Bill Clinton's visit
to Ireland last December. Back-then the insistence was on a "big picture"
deal - one which would see the SDLP and Sinn Féin endorse Northern Ireland's
new Police Service, while the IRA agreed to concrete-over or otherwise decommission
arms dumps. At that point, Dublin took the lead in arguing that nothing
less would do to take the process over the immediate roadblock and beyond
the next inevitable crisis - or break the developing cycle of quarterly
challenges to Mr Trimble's position at the Ulster Unionist Council. The
backdrop was the IRA's failure to engage with the Decommissioning Commission,
Mr Trimble's decision to bar Sinn Féin from North/South meetings, and Mr
Jeffrey Donaldson's apparent determination to force the arms issue again
at the UUP's ruling body in January. The attendant hope was that the Provisional
IRA would see the sense of securing the agreement ahead of the looming general
election, and might be prepared to "do it for Bill" in the dying days of
his presidency. It was not: nor has it shown itself amenable to the argument
that the advent of the Bush presidency means that to drag out the negotiations
is to see them concluded in inevitably less propitious circumstances. Republicans
are notoriously good at sticking to their own agenda. A look at the changing
agenda for this negotiation, moreover, may provide a further key to the
likely nature and scope of any "breakthrough" at this point. Some Irish
sources may now imply that it is Mr Blair who has pushed too hard, too fast,
with too much focus on the question of Mr Trimble's difficulties and requirements.
Until comparatively recently, however, unattributable press briefings suggested
growing Dublin confidence that the arms issue had effectively been dealt
with and that the outstanding difficulty was actually policing. British
sources also suggest that the impatience with Sinn Féin now reportedly evident
in sections of the Irish political establishment reflects Dublin's frustration
and embarrassment at failure to deliver a deal it previously thought in
the bag. In any event, it has been intriguing in recent days to find senior
SDLP figures echoing earlier (gently whispered) British complaints that
Sinn Féin has actually been using the debate on policing to distract attention
from the IRA's refusal to act on previous commitments to put weapons beyond
use. Which brings us to two questions currently exercising British ministers
and officials as well as key members of the Trimble camp. Is Seamus Mallon
preparing - with the backing of the Taoiseach and the Catholic hierarchy
- to finally endorse the Police Service of Northern Ireland? And would such
a fracturing of the "nationalist consensus" trigger further significant
defections to dissident factions such as Continuity and the "Real IRA"?
The renewed British/Ulster Unionist focus on the first of these points arguably
illustrates their truest assessment of the short-to medium term prospects
for the agreement. That assumption is that IRA decommissioning is not going
to take place this side of the British general election, and that the agreement
can survive at least until that point. And the fact that the British are
also sharply focused on the second question might suggest some clue as to
the tenor of the Irish Government's approach, and the present direction
of that debate on policing. |
