A Deal Is In The Air

The word is out on the grapevine of Northern Ireland politics that the decommissioning problem will be solved

The word is out on the grapevine of Northern Ireland politics that the decommissioning problem will be solved. The parties to Senator George Mitchell's review of the Belfast Agreement enter their 10th week of discussion this morning in an atmosphere quickening with optimism. It is a somewhat mystifying transformation from the gloom of recent weeks. For there has been no formal statement from any quarter indicating movement, no declared surrender of principle, no significant change in the public rhetoric of the principal protagonists.

Senator Mitchell imposed strict secrecy on the participants in the review and indeed physically isolated them at key moments in the negotiations. The more overt processes of media-spinning were neutralised. But, of course, deeper background briefing will always continue. Thus, experienced correspondents (including journalists writing in this newspaper) are receiving signals which suggest that the "architecture" of a deal has been agreed between Sinn Fein and Ulster Unionists; that a complex sequencing of events is being arranged; that there will be movement, possibly including a statement, by the IRA. Perhaps the Secretary of State, Mr Peter Mandelson, was even indicating a timeframe when he urged, over the weekend, that the politicians should be allowed another "few days" to secure a deal.

Let us hope, indeed, that the signals and the hints are correct and that the leaders on both sides can navigate a balanced deal past the political shoals and reefs within their own camps. Mr David Trimble will have to move adroitly in order to avoid a challenge from his own dissidents. It has always been less clear how much resistance there may be towards Mr Gerry Adams and his negotiators within the republican power-base. But it is certain that if their leadership is to come under strain it will be at the point when the IRA has to move forward, whether by word or deed, to confirm that its renunciation of violence is permanent and complete.

More than a year has been lost in the dispute over decommissioning - a year in which Northern Ireland might have had the advantages of a fully-functioning, representative and democratic government; in which relations between North and South and between these islands as a whole might have been strengthened with the development of new political institutions. The benefits which can flow from the creation of a healthy democratic climate are enormous. Mr John Hume was correct when he told delegates at the SDLP's annual conference this weekend that in such a climate the party will come into its own. When politics ceases to be about guns and bombs it can start to concern itself with health, education, employment and other issues which bear upon the welfare of the community.

READ MORE

Mr Hume and his deputy, Mr Seamus Mallon, have decried the way in which decommissioning was allowed to become an obstacle to the full implementation of the Belfast Agreement. In this they reflect a widespread and understandable sense of public impatience. But an insistence that those in government are not to be backed by private armies is no trivial thing. If an executive now comes into existence with that principle intact it will have been a necessary wait. And those who have refused to abandon the principle will be owed a debt of gratitude by true democrats throughout these islands.