IRA has an opportunity to end the conflict with honour intact

Watching proceedings at Stormont on Monday you could have been forgiven for thinking you were in any parliamentary assembly in the world.

The Equality (Disability) Bill was being given a cursory second reading. Questions to the Minister of Agriculture followed. Questioners from the wilder reaches of the DUP to Sinn Fein and every political position in between made common cause, pleading with Brid Rodgers to do more for Northern Ireland's beleaguered agricultural sector.

The whole exercise pointed up a significant point: Northern Ireland's fledgling new democratic institutions have prospered beyond the most optimistic expectations.

There have been disagreements, for sure, and serious ones at that. It was never going to be an easy task persuading unionists of Martin McGuinness's fitness to be Minister of Education, for instance. There have been the predictable rows about flags and emblems.

Most worryingly, the system of collective responsibility has proved wanting, as demonstrated by Ms de Brun's decision to site the regional maternity centre in her own constituency against the views of the Assembly and of the relevant statutory committee. And the DUP is still boycotting meetings of the Executive.

Amazingly, however, no one has walked out, and there has been none of the fisticuffs associated with Belfast City Hall in the 1980s when the IRA campaign was in full swing.

The prospect of the institutions going into the deep-freeze for an indeterminate period concerns unionists almost as much as nationalists. While it is unquestionably a bad outcome, it is not the worst possible. Progress has been made.

The basic framework of a settlement - power-sharing devolution within the United Kingdom with a North-South dimension - has been vindicated. No convincing alternative has been presented. Above all, lives have been saved.

An advance, of sorts, has even been made in terms of the rhetoric of the IRA. "There will be no decommissioning either through the front or the back doors. This is an unrealistic and unrealisable demand which simply won't be met." So said the IRA soon after the Canary Wharf bomb in 1996.

As of last weekend that had translated into a more emollient-sounding commitment that the peace process was under no threat from the IRA. The option of a return to war remains, however.

The past two weeks must be deeply perturbing for republicans who assumed that British and Irish democracy was a small thing. Almost as soon as the Mitchell review was completed, the Sinn Fein spokesmen Pat Doherty and Martin Ferris were telling supporters in the US that no commitment to decommissioning had been given.

They wrongly assumed that, even if the unionists raised it again, the British and Irish governments would cave in to the implicit threat of renewed violence yet again.

Instead, there is a determination on both sides of the Irish Sea that this issue must be resolved once and for all. The vista of the only decommissioning occurring being that of the Executive and the North-South and East-West institutions appals every section of opinion, many Sinn Fein supporters included. It is heartening that Mr Adams's leadership is, at last, making an effort to deal with decommissioning in an acceptable way, although the chances of success remain depressingly slim.

Having accepted the principle of consent at least theoretically, having acquiesced in constitutional change in the South, and having accepted and participated in Stormont rule, the Adams leadership has hollowed out the republican project from the core. All that remains as a talisman of republican fidelity is the weapons.

The pretence that the agreement did not require the weapons of war to be put aside has been shown to be just that. While North and South face confidently into a new future based on inclusivity, mutual co-operation and partnership, the people of Ireland are being held to ransom by a small nucleus of militants who cannot accept the loss of status that decommissioning involves.

It was right that suspension - a notion endorsed by the Taoiseach on November 23rd, 1999 - was not activated immediately. Only the threat of imminent suspension has jolted the republican leadership into arm-twisting mode.

If the institutions are suspended, no one can predict with confidence when they will be revived. However, for once, the paths of expedience and morality have converged. If the institutions are suspended, the chances of Mr Adams persuading his militants that Mr McGuinness and Ms de Brun can be reinstated without decommissioning occurring must be nil.

At the same time, weakness from the two governments at this stage would convince the militants that London and Dublin are eternally vulnerable to bullying and threats. Mr Adams's job would be made all the harder, given that the process cannot succeed without unionist involvement.

When support for Mr Trimble's strategy within the Ulster Unionist Council has fallen from 72 per cent to 58 per cent between April 1998 and November 1999, who can say with any confidence that a motion to proceed again on the basis of vague statements would carry majority support? All the indications are to the contrary.

Suspension, therefore, assuming that the calls for a start to actual decommissioning from every section of democratic Irish opinion are not heeded, is actually the most helpful thing for Mr Adams. That is if we are to believe that he is a dove engaged in a biblical struggle to persuade hawks.

It would be wrong to predict that there will not be movement even as the queen's hand moves to sign the suspension legislation into law. There must still be the hope that republicanism will rescue the situation as in the final scene of a Greek tragedy. The whole basis for Mr Adams's strategy ein participating in the government of the whole island - is at risk.

Rather than rehearsing false arguments that guns, even Semtex, are required to defend the Catholic community, it is time for Mr Adams to tell his base the political facts of life.

FIRST, if he really wants to protect Catholics the best way is to ensure so-called loyalists decommission. Of course, the case for unilateral action by the UVF and UDA has never been more powerful, but the realpolitik is that they will only do so if the IRA moves first. The loyalists do not have the same incentive of a role in government.

Second, you don't enter a decommissioning process without ending up decommissioning. Or are we to believe that the IRA's appointment of an interlocutor to the de Chastelain commission was merely a ruse to buy time? If so, it has backfired badly.

Third, while the IRA succeeded in bringing down the Stormont government in 1972, the weapons are now counterproductive to a ballotbox strategy. The guns and bombs are the only blockage in the road to electoral advance and full participation in democracy.

Fourth, the unionists have demonstrated their change of heart and decided that unionism's interests are best served by inclusive government. The only chance of unionism returning to majoritarian instincts is if the current leadership is routed over the decommissioning issue.

Fifth, the republican movement has already been split. The choice today might be an unpalatable one - between a controlled split now or a more drawn-out and debilitating erosion of IRA support to the fringe groups in the future.

Sixth, it is just laughable to present decommissioning as republican surrender when Sinn Fein hold two seats in the Northern Ireland Executive. What defeated army can claim such spoils?

Last, there is an opportunity for the IRA to end the conflict with honour intact. Just as a ceasefire was called before the IRA was seriously damaged in Catholic eyes, so it can decommission now before opinion starts to blame the IRA for impeding nationalist and republican involvement in government.

Unionists and nationalists alike must cross their fingers and hope that Mr Adams will find new wells of courage. That is just one of the ironies of the process we are all engaged in and all committed to bringing to a successful conclusion.

Steven King is an adviser to the Northern Ireland First Minister, David Trimble