IRA disbandment key to cooperation in Northern Ireland, politicians say
BELFAST, Northern Ireland (AP) – Northern Ireland’s Catholic-Protestant administration won’t be revived unless the Irish Republican Army disbands, leading British and U.S. officials predicted Tuesday. IRA commanders remained silent about Britain’s resumption of authority in Northern Ireland after nearly three years of local power-sharing between two British Protestant parties and two Irish Catholic parties, including the IRA’s Sinn Fein.
Most politicians and commentators blamed the political breakdown on the IRA. Police have accused the outlawed group of pursuing a range of violent and duplicitous activities, including spying on Sinn Fein’s coalition partners, that raised suspicions about the IRA’s commitment to its 1997 cease-fire.
“There can’t be any tolerance for this sort of behavior,” said Richard Haass, President Bush’s point man on Northern Ireland affairs, who called on the IRA “to go out of business.”
“The IRA needs to give up all of its paramilitary dimension. It needs to give up any acts of violence. It needs to give up preparations for acts of violence. It needs to give up its arms,” said Haass, director of policy planning at the State Department.
If this didn’t happen, he said, “I don’t see how you’re going to build the required level of trust that has to be in place in order for power-sharing, in order for devolved governance, to resume.”
In London, Britain’s governor for the province, Northern Ireland Secretary John Reid told lawmakers Sinn Fein was still “riding the two horses” of politics and violence. He said Protestants would not trust Sinn Fein unless the IRA declared its violence was “a thing of the past” and ceased all activities.
“I do not believe it’s possible to sustain the power-sharing element of this agreement unless there’s a definitive move in that direction,” Reid said, adding that continued IRA activity served as “a ball and chain around the feet” of Sinn Fein leaders.
“Of course Sinn Fein have broken faith with everybody,” a senior moderate Catholic, Seamus Mallon, said in the same House of Commons debate. “… They have got to rid themselves of the discredited dual strategy and commit themselves to exclusively peaceful means.”
In Dublin, Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams said Britain’s decision to strip power from local hands, and to blame IRA activity for the decision, would only delay the IRA’s retirement.
Adams said Reid was trying “to reduce the agenda to a single item. This will exacerbate the crisis rather than assist the process.”
Uppermost in Adams’ strategy has been the need to minimize splits within the IRA.
Anti-Sinn Fein dissidents nicknamed the Real IRA killed 29 people in the 1998 car bombing of Omagh and still mount occasional attacks, partly in hopes of impressing disgruntled IRA members and undermining Adams. Shutting down the mainstream IRA could boost Real IRA recruitment.
But former IRA members noted that Adams had already coaxed the outlawed group toward its 1997 cease-fire and two acts of disarmament in October 2001 and April 2002. Disbanding, they said, was a realistic goal.
“It is possible for Sinn Fein to prevail upon the IRA to disband, bearing in mind the distance the republican movement has traveled over the past 20 years,” said Tommy McKearney, who served 16 years in prison for killing a Protestant mailman who was a part-time British soldier.
McKearney, who lost three brothers – one blown up while planting an IRA bomb, a second killed in a British army ambush, a third slain by Protestant extremists – criticizes Adams and other republican leaders for not cutting a compromise deal in the 1970s.
“The war, in my opinion, has been over for a long time,” said Martin Meehan, a supporter of Adams and a former Belfast IRA commander who was once on Britain’s most-wanted list.
Asked why the IRA still had such firm roots in the most hard-line Catholic areas, Meehan said, “It’s historical. It’s a last line of defense. But it’s more psychological than reality.”