Northern Ireland:
Impasse almost over?

by Steve Lawton

Eleven weeks of intense and carefully calculated talks in the Mitchell 
review stage of the Irish peace process, has brought the key participants -
- the Ulster Unionist Party (UUP) and Sinn Fein — within a hair's breadth 
of overcoming the 19-month impasse.

A statement issued by the Irish Republican Army reaffirming full backing 
for the Good Friday Agreement — bar a few dissident voices — has been met 
with widespread approval.

Both nationalists and republicans, Unionists and loyalists have responded 
positively to this latest and crucial move to overcome Unionist objections.

The obstacle all along has been the Unionist insistence, in defiance of the 
Good Friday Agreement, that the IRA decommission its weapons before Sinn 
Fein takes ministerial office in the Northern Ireland Assembly.

The IRA statement said: "The IRA is willing to further enhance the peace 
process and consequently, following the establishment of the institutions 
agreed on Good Friday last year, the IRA leadership will appoint a 
representative to enter into discussions with General John de Chestelain 
and the Independent International Commission on Decommisioning."

It is clear from both the Sinn Fein and UUP statements published the 
following day, that a greater degree of minds meeting in agreement rather 
than in collision is implied in them. Some elements are almost 
interchangeable.

Sinn Fein said: "There is no doubt that we are entering into the final 
stages of the resolution of the conflict." The IRA has maintained a cease-
fire for four years, it said, and its commitment to the process was 
undoubted.

It said the two Sinn Fein ministers, in office, would pledge themselves to 
"maintain a commitment to non-violence and exclusively peaceful and 
democratic means." The statement recognised, as did the UUP's, that there 
had been enough suffering.

The UUP declared: "The UUP recognises and accepts that it is legitimate for 
nationalists to pursue their political objective of a united Ireland by 
consent through exclusively peaceful and democratic methods."

The review facilitator, US Senator George Mitchell said that he was 
"increasingly confident" that "common ground" on both the setting up of 
institutions and the process of decommissioning now existed.

He had therefore "asked that the assessment on which the [de Chastelain] 
Commission has been working, be made public promptly and the parties give 
their views on that report."

General John de Chastelain, in his statement said that the Good Friday 
Agreement deadline for decommissioning had seven months left to run. 
Despite difficulties, he said, "the contributions of those on cease-fire 
over what is now a protracted period is itself significant."

He said the "process of decommissioning" now required the "appointment by 
paramilitary organisations of authorised representatives" to liaise with 
the Commission. The IRA statement now makes this commitment.

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