Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, September 1, 1994 TAG: 9409010100
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: By SHAWN POGATCHNIK ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: BELFAST, NORTHERN IRELAND LENGTH: Medium
Spend a night at Belfast City Hall, watching Protestant and Catholic politicians abuse one another, and you might wonder how they could ever reach agreement - with or without an IRA cease-fire.
The Irish Republican Army decision to stop ``all military operations'' at midnight Wednesday set the scene for the unprecedented inclusion of Sinn Fein, the IRA's political partner, in talks on a peaceful future for Northern Ireland.
Success in discussions between Northern Ireland's main parties will require a conversion to compromise in a land where ``no surrender'' is a code of honor.
In Northern Ireland's local councils, the one place where pro-British Protestants and Sinn Fein share the stage, opponents are apt to label one another ``scum'' and occasionally come to blows.
The challenge for Northern Ireland is to find a system of government acceptable to Protestant unionists and Catholic nationalists.
``We are a divided people. We've never had agreement on how we should be governed,'' said John Hume, leader of the Social Democratic and Labor Party, the main Catholic-based party that wants Ireland united peacefully.
In 1992, Hume was the dominant Catholic nationalist voice in British-brokered talks on Northern Ireland - talks that excluded Sinn Fein and ended in stalemate.
In frustration, Hume last year had secret talks with Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams that explored the potential for Sinn Fein to pursue its goals without the IRA. The talks encouraged the British and Irish governments in December to offer Sinn Fein a place in renewed negotiations if the IRA stopped the killing for good.
Irish Prime Minister Albert Reynolds told the Dail, the Irish parliament, he wants to get Sinn Fein involved in the search for a settlement as soon as possible.
He said Sinn Fein would be included by next month in the Irish Forum for Peace and Reconciliation, which would discuss peace prospects in advance of talks involving the British and pro-British parties in Northern Ireland.
It has proved difficult enough to get all Catholic nationalists - Sinn Fein, Hume's party, and the parties in the Irish Republic - talking in one room. Getting Protestants to sit down with Sinn Fein will be incalculably harder.
Northern Ireland's border was drawn in 1920 to assure a pro-British majority, and Protestants fear sharing power with the Catholic majority on the island as a whole.
The Catholic side is growing in confidence and is eager for change. Protestant unionists, accustomed to fighting change at every turn, have difficulty projecting a positive program.
``There's no de Klerk figure emerging on the Protestant unionist side,'' said Tim Pat Coogan, author of a history of the IRA, referring to the former president of South Africa, F.W. de Klerk, who helped end apartheid.
Irish republicans have set themselves in a fundamentally new direction. Sinn Fein, which began as a mere mouthpiece for the IRA in the early 1970s, no longer can be considered the armed group's subservient wing.
With Sinn Fein's electoral support exceeding 80,000, one-third of Catholic voters in Northern Ireland, and leader Adams able to command international attention, the subtext of Wednesday's IRA decision was clear: Sinn Fein is now in the lead, and the IRA was prepared to stand aside.
But the minute that Sinn Fein reaches any negotiating table, some Protestant unionists are likely to get up and walk out.
Ian Paisley, leader of the hard-line Democratic Unionists, refused to join British ministers during the 1992 talks on a symbolically crucial trip to Dublin. His party, which attracts more votes than Sinn Fein, stills dreams of a Protestant-majority parliament for Northern Ireland - effectively returning to the system which provoked the Catholic protests in the 1960s.
The larger Ulster Unionist Party, led by the soft-spoken James Molyneaux, argued its case calmly in Dublin and has shown some flexibility.
Former Irish Prime Minister Garret Fitzgerald said it boiled down to this: Sinn Fein leaders ``want to get into politics.''
``People aren't going to vote for them as long as the IRA go around murdering people in close association with them,'' he said. ``Some of their leaders seem to think that if violence stops, they can gain more ground politically.''
If they can't, as everyone knows, the guns are still there.
by CNB