Sir, - Mr Gerry Adams said on March 29th that an IRA statement that the "war is over" would not guarantee that there would be no violence in the future. That is possibly true, as no one can ever completely guaranteed that violence from some quarter won't arise again. But a clear statement of intent could go a long way towards building the trust and confidence necessary for resolving the present impasse and enabling the full implementation of all aspects of the Good Friday Agreement - an agreement which, for all its faults, still offers the best hope for peace, justice and stability, but which is now in grave danger.
In the referendum of May 1998, the Irish people ratified the agreement and committed themselves to "democratic and peaceful means of resolving differences on political issues". The participants to the agreement - including Sinn Fein - reaffirmed their "total opposition to any use or threat of force by others for any political purpose". Much of the present difficulty stems from the fact that the IRA - closely linked to Sinn Fein - has never accepted the agreement and has never recognised the will of the people. It have issued several statements to that effect over the past two years. The IRA still sees itself as the "legitimate government of the Irish Republic" and still exercises some control over Sinn Fein..
Sinn Fein is entitled to sit on the power-sharing Executive, not because of its mandate alone, but because of the unique provisions put in by the parties to the agreement. In the absence of decommissioning, or even a clear commitment from the IRA, how can such an executive ever really work? Again, if 92 per cent of Sinn Fein members accepted the agreement, why wasn't the IRA able to do the same? Why did it feel it necessary after the agreement was ratified to come out totally against it? Was that designed to stop the agreement ever working? The IRA position must be addressed now. Time is running out for the agreement.
Opportunities have been lost or half taken all through this "peace process" - indeed at times opportunities have been deliberately squandered by one side or the other. The "peace process" has been in continual crisis. More often than not it has resembled a "cold war" - a continuation of the bitter conflict by other means - rather than a genuine attempt to "put past failures behind us". If the agreement is to be saved, the cold war approach must now end and the work of building trust at grass-roots level must be seriously addressed.
The latest IRA ceasefire is less than three years old (not six years as John Waters stated in his column of March 28th). That resumption of violence between February 1996 and July 1997 did a lot of damage. Not only were lives lost and whole communities devastated, trust and confidence in the republican movement's commitment to peace was shattered, and that has never fully been restored.
Sinn Fein never seems to recognise this. It should be careful that IRA intransigence is not again permitted to destroy the process its members have put so much work into and to which so many others have committed their lives. - Yours, etc.,
Julitta Clancy, Meath Peace Group, Parsonstown, Batterstown, Co Meath.