IRA statement disrupts momentum at Stormont

They haven't gone away, you know. And they won't shut up either. It was inevitable the IRA would say its piece, sooner rather than later. Some activists must have been bemused by Sinn Fein's adherence to the Mitchell Principles, which include such ringing denunciations of violence.

Reassurance is the underlying theme of the IRA spokesman's interview with An Phoblacht. As a Sinn Fein leader said to this writer recently: "We have backbenchers as well."

The IRA spokesman urges backing and even sympathy for Sinn Fein: "All republicans should understand and support them as they do what they believe is right and necessary to bring about a lasting peace."

Commenting on the interview, a senior unionist said that at least it would dispel the illusions of "mistyeyed do-gooders" who thought the gun had been taken out of Northern Ireland politics.

The interview makes clear that Sinn Fein has not "delivered" the IRA any more than the loyalist parties have turned their own paramilitaries into pacifists. Ceasefires are an interim gesture and the pendulum can swing back as well as forward.

In public at least, the Ulster Unionists held their nerve. Their message was that the IRA had merely confirmed what the party said this week: Sinn Fein signing up for the Mitchell Principles was a charade. But these republican rascals would not dictate the outcome of tomorrow's UUP executive meeting.

In reality, the UUP must find the IRA's intervention deeply unhelpful not only in its content but even more in its timing. But as those who know republicans say: "The IRA doesn't care about bad publicity."

There are no indications that the ceasefire is under threat. It seems the only bombshells we can expect from the IRA, at this stage anyway, are verbal. Coming on top of Dr Mo Mowlam's "no-numbers, no-geography" definition of consent in a newspaper interview, the comments in An Phoblacht will deepen unionist suspicion about the Stormont talks and the peace process in general.

Although the meeting of UUP leaders with the British Prime Minister on Wednesday was described as "constructive", at the time of writing Mr Blair still had to respond publicly to the unionist shopping list. If he made the right noises on consent and decommissioning it would, apparently, go a long way.

The IRA faux pas coincided with opinion poll figures from UTV and the Belfast Telegraph showing that 93 per cent of UUP supporters and 76 per cent of those backing the Democratic Unionists favoured their parties remaining in talks.

Senior Protestant churchmen have been urging the UUP to sit down with Sinn Fein and a BBC poll showed unionist voters divided almost 50-50 on the issue.

It is against this background that the UUP executive meets at party headquarters in Belfast's Glengall Street tomorrow. This is a regular meeting originally planned for last Saturday. It was postponed for a week because of the funeral of Princess Diana.

The timing of the meeting, two days from the date set for the start of substantive negotiations at Stormont, has heightened its significance for many. It is an important event but will not necessarily be the last word on the subject.

The executive is scheduled to discuss the party's attitude to the Stormont talks now that Sinn Fein is taking part. Should they negotiate with the republicans, boycott the talks or choose a middle way?

The executive can exercise its right to pronounce on policy, but tactics are the leader's prerogative. Mr David Trimble is entitled to make the final call.

The notion of the UUP attending plenary sessions with Mr Gerry Adams and Mr Martin McGuinness is an unlikely one at this stage. Nor is it plausible that the UUP would boycott the process.

UUP sources say the most likely choice is proximity talks, with the party leadership mandated to report back to the executive within a specific period. But senior unionists see nothing sacred about September 15th.

The talks chairman, Senator George Mitchell, has already given his implicit blessing to proximity talks if that is the only way to make progress. Unionists noticed the Sinn Fein president hinting that the important thing was to get the show on the road, even if all the actors were not on the same stage yet. "The way their presence is manifest is a matter which can be dealt with when we have them in the same building as the rest of us," Mr Gerry Adams said.

Hiccups and bumps notwithstanding, the more pragmatic unionists believe there is an underlying logic driving the parties into talks. Northern politics is at a point where most parties are leaving the door ajar to one another.

But even unionists in a "dealmaking mode" believe Sinn Fein will have to make a quantum leap from being a republican party to one which accepts the continuance of partition. Mr Adams's emphasis on an "equality agenda" has aroused unionist curiosity.

Sinn Fein seeks a "democratic peace settlement" as a down-payment on a united Ireland. By next May, the talks participants are meant to have arrived at a form of words which will achieve the contradictory aim of simultaneously strengthening and undermining partition.

The meeting between the UUP and the Democratic Unionists last week aroused intense interest and speculation. It is possible that the UUP and DUP could set up an alternative talks process, thereby creating a new set of complications for Senator Mitchell and the two governments. But sources in the talks administration have predicted that the DUP will be in the Stormont process at some stage.

Despite rumblings inside the party, it will be surprising if there is a mutiny against the UUP leadership among the executive.

But proximity talks can only be seen as a holding operation. They are unsatisfactory even from a UUP point of view because the party will have to depend on intermediaries whom it does not necessarily trust, e.g. civil servants from the Northern Ireland Office.

Sooner or later it will have to decide whether to meet the demon Sinn Feiners or not. Although that choice cannot be postponed forever, it is still some distance away.