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Wednesday, August 08, 2001
Little more than a month ago, an international disarmament commission headed by a retired Canadian general reported that "we have been unable to ascertain how the IRA will put its weapons beyond use." That was a diplomatic way of saying that the Irish Republican Army was stalling on the disarmament that is a prerequisite for making permanent a Protestant-Catholic power-sharing government in Belfast.
But on Monday Gen. John de Chastelain professed himself satisfied that the IRA had made proposals to his commission that indeed would put IRA guns and explosives "completely and verifiably beyond use."
The general's optimism was shared by the prime ministers of the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland, who have been working overtime to salvage the 1998 Good Friday Agreement that has brought peace and a measure of political cooperation to Northern Ireland.
More skeptical, at least for now, are leading Ulster Unionists, pro-British Protestants who as a result of the Good Friday Agreement and an IRA cease-fire warily joined in a coalition government with Catholic Nationalists, including Sinn Fein, the IRA's political ally. David Trimble, who resigned as "first minister" of the coalition government to protest the IRA procrastination on disarmament, so far has refused to take the latest IRA commitment at face value.
Mr. Trimble, who must deal with restive constituents of his own, may see such temporizing as tit-for-tat for the IRA's procrastination. But if he and his allies wait too long, they will risk turning back the clock not to last month but all the way to 1998. That would undo years of work on both sides of the Protestant-Catholic divide.
The new IRA proposal -- which responds to Unionist anxieties -- is only one development in a flurry of diplomatic activity designed to salvage the power-sharing government in Belfast. In recent days Britain and the Irish Republic have offered other proposals to meet Catholic concerns, including a long-sought reorganization of Northern Ireland's traditionally Protestant constabulary and a scaling back of the British military presence in the province.
The pieces of the political puzzle in Northern Ireland seem finally to be coming together. No one should walk away from the table now.