Spectre of Drumcree overshadows talks

ONE observer summed up the sensation well at Stormont this week: "It's deja vu - all over again.

None the less, the politicians trooped back to Castle Buildings after their holiday. But there was no spring in their step. They'd passed this way before.

Could they rise from the mire after the deeply depressing summer of Drumcree and its aftermath? Initially, no.

This week the politicians were still bogged down in issues far removed from substantive negotiations.

The theme tune for these talks could be the Billie Holiday classic, I Can't Get Started. Many politicians want to put the summer behind them, particularly Mr David Trimble, but Drumcree is still casting its dark shadow.

Yet there was some movement, albeit in the margins of the talks.

Mr John Taylor stated that if there was to be any hope of progress the talks must be driven by the two main representatives of the nationalist and unionist peoples, the SDLP and the Ulster Unionist Party.

Progress was indeed made. A joint working party was set up to tackle the decommissioning issue. One senior UUP figure "strictly off the record" said, yes, the parties could do a deal on the matter to detach it slightly from the talks proper.

Mr Trimble spoke reassuringly of improved relations between his party and the SDLP. Mr Taylor availed of every media soundbite to speak of how wonderfully well talks between the two were proceeding.

The SDLP leader, Mr John Hume, rather bemused by this outpouring of goodwill, agreed there was progress. But his party remains deeply suspicious.

Some nationalists wondered if Mr Trimble was making amends for Drumcree. Perhaps, they speculated, there was a unionist realisation that if the Catholic and nationalist community felt angry and alienated after Drumcree then politics in Northern Ireland was going nowhere.

But that doesn't square with his insistence that he had no apologies to make to nationalists. And more telling are his comments that as far as the UUP is concerned these talks are about rolling back the Anglo Irish Agreement.

In the context of the SDLP

seeking a dynamic Irish dimension to any solution, it is difficult, at this stage, to see how the two parties can reach an accommodation.

But if that matter was being properly addressed in round table discussion it would mean the talks were under way.

But they're not.

During the summer, procedural wrangling stalled them. All this week they were mired in debate over the loyalist parties' participation.

In the face of verbal assaults on the party from the DUP and the UK Unionists, Mr David Ervine of the Progressive Unionist Party posed the question: do politicians prefer peace to war?

Surely, he contended, it was better to have his party and the Ulster Democratic Party at Stormont where they could exert some influence on the Combined Loyalist Military Command, to whom they are linked?

It was the argument that won the day. Apart from the DUP and the UK Unionists the two governments and the other parties were simply riot going to force them from Stormont, even if intellectual contortions were needed to keep them there.

Mr Peter Robinson and Mr Robert McCartney argued, with some merit, that eventually this could open the door to Sinn Fein. But that depends on an IRA ceasefire.

Despite Mr Bruton's optimism, the feeling in the North this week was that a renewed ceasefire was some distance away.

Having resolved the row over the loyalist parties, next week's talks will likely be devoted to an attempt by the Alliance Party to have the UUP and the DUP censured, though not expelled, for their involvement in Drumcree.

So, next week the prospects of the participants engaging in meaningful negotiations seem remote. As for the week after? Well, maybe there will be movement - if another crisis doesn't provide a impediment.

Perhaps then 15 weeks after the talks "began", they will start trying to agree an agenda. And how long will that take? No wonder people are getting depressing flashes of "deja vu - all over again".