His caution was understandable, and not long after he spoke Protestant gunmen continued the terror, killing at least one Roman Catholic in a drive-by shooting the day after the ceasefire began. Still, nationalists in the Republic of Ireland, Irish-Americans from Boston to San Francisco and a vacationing President Bill Clinton all applauded the IRA’s announcement. The president can claim some credit for the breakthrough with the IRA. His controversial decision to grant a U.S. visa to Gerry Adams, the leader of Sinn Fein, the IRA’s political arm, was a turning point. Adams’s visit to New York last February didn’t live up to Washington’s expectations when the IRA leader failed to make an explicit peace offer. But the trip may have convinced Adams of the PR – and funding – benefits to be gained from softening his organization’s hard line.
Over the past 25 years, the IRA’s sometimes indiscriminate acts of terror have claimed more than half of the 3,169 lives lost in the current phase of Ireland’s struggle. The group still shows no willingness to hand in its formidable arsenal, now estimated by security experts at up to 300 tons. In the short term, the most prominent danger to the peace comes from the province’s Protestant militia, who conspicuously failed to offer a matching ceasefire. That leaves British Prime Minister John Major “walking on a tightrope in a high wind,” as a senior British official put it. If London appears to be giving too much to Irish nationalists, it might drive moderate Protestants away from negotiations; giving the Catholics too little might drive them away from the table. But in Newsweek interviews, key players in the fragile peace process suggested steps that could ease tension:
In the meantime, the politicians could not do better than to follow the advice offered by John Hume, the leader of Northern Ireland’s moderate Catholic party, whose negotiating skills have been essential to much of the progress made so far. “Once we start spilling our sweat together and not our blood, then the old barriers will break down,” he says. Last week in Northern Ireland, for once, that prediction didn’t sound entirely delusional.
