Opportunity to grasp peace persists but the hour is very late

THERE is at present a unique opportunity for peace. And that much abused term unique is justified here.

No Irish nationalist, be he Wolfe Tone, Parnell, Pearse or Michael Collins ever dreamt that one day a US president would be as committed to a settlement of the Irish problem as Bill Clinton is today.

Behind Clinton there are immmensely powerful, sympathetic figures such as Christopher Dodd and the most powerful political family in the western world, the Kennedys - five of whom were elected in the last American elections in the face of a general Republican rout of the Democrats.

In Washington, Senator Edward Kennedy has been a tireless supporter of Ireland. In Dublin, his sister, Jean, has proved herself one of the most devoted and effective forces behind the peace process.

The other Irish-American figures who helped to bring about the ceasefire, Bill Flynn, Chuck Feeney, Niall O'Dowd and Bruce Morrison, are motivated and eager to help as ever.

Nor is it only the Democrats who want to help the peace process. The Republicans have also launched a pro-peace process plank in their presidential campaigns (A banner has been devised showing the Republican, elephant emblazoned with shamrocks).

On a lighter but still significant note, Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich has not alone declared hiss willingness to help in the peace process but is known to have taken up the study of contemporary Irish history.

But beyond all these forces there can be seen in Belfast, in the person of George Mitchell, the tangible evidence of American support.

Already David Trimble has blinked before the prospect of trying to exclude him from a central role in the talks. Trimble, whose visits have already created a bad impression in Washington, knows he would not be forgiven an insult to one of the most respected figures in American political life.

Some republicans argue for violence because of Whitehall's behaviour during the peace process; they should realise the Americans have witnessed that behaviour also.

Now that the talks have at last got started under Mitchell's chairman-ship, neither Clinton nor Mitchell will allow them to be aborted because of the British codology we are seeing, not alone in Irish matters, but over the BSE issue in Europe. Britain's foot-dragging, so that the Tories could stay in power with unionist support, is well understood.

This is not a time for being resentful of England merely but for being confident, showing the head-up attitude of the Falls. If ever there was a time for living up to the meaning of the title Sinn Fein, We Ourselves, it is now.

Mention of Sinn Fein brings me to the position of Gerry Adams and the fierce secret struggle for the soul of republicanism now in progress.

I WOULD remind those who make facile calls from the side-lines for Adams to condemn atrocities - there would be no peace process were it not for Adams. It was he who conceived the idea of internationalising the problem by securing American support and went to the IRA with the proposal. Today, he must again persuade these men; not alienate them by condemnations.

So far as the physical force school is concerned, the response which Adams's earlier initiative hash received from Britain constitutes one of the most miserable chapters in a long history of British arrogance and blindness towards this country.

In fact, violence would almost certainly have broken out last winter were it not for the Clinton visit.

The subsequent appointment of the Mitchell Commission raised hopes that violence could have been permanently averted.

But Adams and his strategy were dealt a body blow by John Major's decision in effect to reject the Mitchell report and opt instead for the delaying device of the forum elections.

To illustrate what the peace-makers are up against I can do no better than retell a story told to me by Dan Breen, the man who fired the first, fatal, shots of the Black and Tan war.

It illustrates the history-bequeathed anti-British attitudes of some republicans which the British prevarication over the ceasefire has helped to fan into flame.

Breen visited one of his heroes, the old Fenian, Luke Dillon a precursor of today's IRA bombers, on his death bed.

"Dan" he said approvingly as he lay dying. "I've bombed the bastards and I'd bomb them again but you have tasted their blood.

Dillon went on to tell Breen that he had heard that a beggar at the site of one of the London explosions he had been responsible for, that at the Carlton Club, had set up his pitch wearing a placard reading "blinded by the Fenian outrages".

On learning this, Dillon entreated all Clann na Gael sympathisers passing through London to give the beggar a half crown because, he said, according to Breen, "that's the way I'd like to see all-the..."

As the conviction grew in republican circles over the last months that Britain was not serious about the peace process, prominent republicans, equal to if not exceeding the stature of Breen and Dillon in the eyes of today's IRA, have also made Dillon-esque speeches.

One of them, at a gathering to honour ex-prisoners, declared with the thunderous approval of those present:

"The only thing the Brits understand is bag stuff in London."

These and similar remarks were under-reported but their significance can no longer go unremarked following the death of Garda McCabe and the destruction and injury to the innocent, in the home of Man United.

The murder of Garda McCabe particularly underlines the seriousness of the situation. Normally, the deliberate killing of a member of the Republic's security forces by a member of the IRA would be regarded as a most serious matter. It would breach Standing Order Number Eight which, specifically outlaws any such action against the security agents of this State and directs hostilities solely against those of the UK and the Six Counties

A deliberate breach of this order would in other circumstances constitute a court martial offence, renderings the perpetrator or perpetrators liable to consequences better imagined than described.

FOR EXAMPLE, in the case of the unpremeditated but, fatal shooting of a garda in the 198Os, the IRA man who pulled the trigger was ordered to proceed immediately to a public place, phone the Garda and give himself up. He did so, knowingly incurring a long prison sentence.

In Garda McCabe's death, however, not alone has no one voluntarily surrendered or been given up but the murder was so far outside the IRA leadership's preconceptions that it wrongly felt confident in immediately disclaiming the incident.

The inescapable conclusion is that the Republican movement has arrived at a juncture where it must choose between the advocates of fertiliser bombs - "bag stuff" - in London, and those who wish to see a restoration of the ceasefire and Sinn Fein's entry into the peace talks.

This debate, force vs constitutional action is a recurring theme of republicanism, as the history of splits and violence from which the Provisionals themselves emerged so sadly demonstrates.

Had the ceasefire opportunity been seized by London as it deserved to be, this debate would not be taking place today.

But now that it is, every man, woman and child living either on this island, or that neighbouring us, has an interest in seeing Gerry Adams and his supporters carry the day. But the hour is very late:

We had fed the heart on fantasies,

The heart's grown brutal from the fare;

More substance in our enmities

Than in our love;

Yeats, be it remembered, wrote those lines in time of civil war.

Tim Pat Coogan is the author of The IRA and The Troubles