POLITICS-IRELAND: Sinn Fein Touts New Peace Proposals in U.S.

By Farhan Haq Reprint | | Print |

NEW YORK, Mar 12 1998 (IPS) - Northern Irish nationalist leader Gerry Adams, who meets U.S. officals in talks over the coming week, has brought with him an unprecedented proposal for a transitional settlement that would set aside the immediate re-unification of Ireland.

Adams and his fellow Sinn Fein negotiator Martin McGuinness, are scheduled to hold meetings with U.S. officials and Irish- American leaders through next Wednesday. They have produced a package of Constitutional reforms for discussion,including the re- vamping of security in Northern Ireland and the creation of all- Ireland bodies.

For Sinn Fein, the political wing of the Irish Republican Army (IRA) – these proposals represent a significant shift from its historic position of immediate independence from British rule for the six counties of Northern Ireland.

Sinn Fein leaders are adamant that the package they are presenting on their U.S. visit remains part of their vision for a “step by step” re-unification of the North with the Republic of Ireland.

“We are totally and absolutely committed to the independence of Ireland,” McGuinness told reporters in New York Thursday. “We are also a very realistic people. We know it’s not going to happen by May of this year.”

Sinn Fein leaders know that their proposals may have little to do with the draft peace agreement scheduled to be put to a referendum in the North by May 7. That plan, details of which are being worked out by the British and Irish government, is still viewed with skepticism by Sinn Fein, McGuinness said.

No agreement could work, he argued, unless it included the views of Sinn Fein, which is Northern Ireland’s third-largest political party behind the Protestant-based Ulster Unionist Party (UUP) and the Catholic-based Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP). Both McGuinness and Adams were elected to the British Parliament last year from Northern constituencies, although they do not accept the sovereignty of the British government over the six counties.

“Over 80 percent of the people in the North feel there’s no hope of a settlement,” McGuinness added, citing a recent BBC poll.

“The real point is not whether there will be an agreement by May,” Adams said after a meeting with British Prime Minister Tony Blair in London Thursday morning, before he left for the United States. “It is about what kind of agreement is required to remove the causes of conflict … (and) it must be based in an explicit, all-Ireland context.”

Sinn Fein is eager to show that it is willing to participate in developing a workable peace plan – even if it leaves aside for now the one concern on which the movement had previously refused to compromise: immediate independence from Britain.

Adams’s proposal is designed at least to ensure, as he put it in a newspaper article last Sunday, that “there is no return to unionist domination.”

To that end, he said, a peace agreement must create all-Ireland bodies that have “significant and meaningful executive powers alongside consultative functions,” which can be expanded over time; the right of the Northern Irish to vote in Irish Presidential and Parliamentary elections; and the disbanding of the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) security force.

“A proper policing service must be created to replace the RUC, which must be disbanded,” Adams wrote. “It must have a minimum of 40 percent nationalists in its ranks.”

“There has to be a new policing service,” McGuinness affirmed. “The RUC is unacceptable,” he argued, saying Catholics regard the force as simply a paramilitary “designed to keep the nationalists in line.”

Whether the Sinn Fein proposals are acceptable to the British and Irish governments – let alone the UUF and other Northern Protestant-based groups loyal to continuing the union with Britain – is another question entirely.

Adams and Sinn Fein “are simply out of court,” UUF leader David Trimble said in response to the package. “The views they put forward are not serious, they are not realistic, and they are not going to achieve a settlement.”

Nor is the latest offer from Sinn Fein entirely acceptable to Prime Minister Bertie Ahern’s government in the Republic of Ireland.

Ahern reportedly is willing to amend or delete Articles Two and Three of the Irish Constitution, asserting sovereign rights over the North, if a peace agreement is reached. However, Adams, who argued this week that “the definition of the Irish national territory should not be diluted (and) the constitutional imperative should remain” is likely to see that concession as a deal-breaker.

Nevertheless, the Sinn Fein leaders – who are expected to meet with U.S. supporters like Sen. Edward Kennedy and attend a St. Patrick’s Day party at the White House party on Tuesday – are being praised for accepting the need to back down at least a little to secure peace.

On the other hand, the British ‘Guardian’ newspaper said in an editorial that Trimble “seems like a man who has not yet made his peace with the idea of peace….it is absurd that David Trimble and Gerry Adams are still not speaking directly to one another.” (McGuinness this week repeated Sinn Fein’s call for such a meeting.)

The paper added that Sinn Fein’s views would have to be taken into account for any workable deal: “The only peace worth having is an inclusive one – an accord respected by the representatives of the men of war.”

Protestant groups contend that Sinn Fein and the IRA, are only feigning peaceful intentions and are unwilling to halt the Irish conflict. Indeed, Sinn Fein only ended a two-week suspension from peace talks this week after the Blair government declared that there was evidence of IRA involvement in two murders last month.

McGuinness dismissed the suspension as “ridiculous” and added that “there wasn’t one scrap of evidence…which proved that the IRA was responsible for the two killings for which it was accused.”