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Blair and Clinton could sink Ulster's chance for peace

By Paul Bew

BILL CLINTON has returned to Ireland. He is expected to discuss the current serious difficulties afflicting the Belfast Agreement with Tony Blair later this week. Both men are genuinely keen to preserve that agreement, but they need to be careful that their activities over the next few days and weeks do not have the effect of undermining it.

Both former president and Prime Minister are 1960s children, in the sense that they analyse the Ulster troubles in terms of the Deep South in the pre-civil rights era. Mr Clinton's language, in particular, resonates with this assumption and, over time, the choreography of his visits, initially well-balanced, has veered off into a markedly Irish nationalist direction.

If either Mr Clinton or Mr Blair had actually marched on civil rights marches, they would know that this analogy was misleading. In particular, the presence of an unresolved national question makes the process of internal reform spectacularly difficult for any state, denying it the very legitimacy that it needs to effect change.

The reform of America has been made easier by the fact that there was never any question of the absorption of the United States into another political entity. Unionist opponents of the agreement are enjoying the opportunity to attack a "pledge-breaking" Prime Minister and a discredited former president. On March 3, 1999, the Prime Minister told the Scotsman that IRA decommissioning must happen because "people have got to know if they are sitting down in the Executive with people who have given up violence for good".

Sinn Fein is now in its second year in the Executive and a senior republican, Brian Keenan - with the full approval of the Sinn Fein leadership - has recently pointedly reminded us that violence has not been given up for good. Interestingly, British public opinion appears to be increasingly dissatisfied - with 75 per cent saying that the IRA must decommission if Sinn Fein is to stay in the Executive.

President Clinton, on the other hand, at the end of June 1999 assured Unionists that they could "simply walk out" if the IRA commitments on decommissioning were not kept. When in effect David Trimble did just that, at the beginning of 2000, the president exerted - unsuccessfully - his influence against Mr Trimble.

Unlike anti-agreement politicians, Mr Trimble has inevitably more complex attitudes towards the two leaders. Both Mr Blair and Mr Clinton have defended in explicit terms the constitutional outlines of the historic compromise settlement that Mr Trimble is proud to have negotiated. They have defended it in terms that accept that Unionist core interests have to be, and have been, protected.

But the First Minister is well aware that Mr Clinton and Mr Blair have left him in a rather exposed position at the present time. The Ulster Unionist Party manifesto, launched yesterday, makes the point: "We regret that others play down the threat to peace and democracy from paramilitaries and have so far failed to deliver their pledges."

It is, of course, something that the electorate has noticed. The key group in this election comprises those erstwhile pro-agreement Unionist supporters who now feel let down. There are senior officials who believe that the Ulster middle class is privately grateful to the "man in Whitehall" for taking on the inevitable morally ambiguous burdens of peace negotiations.

But the Ulster middle class does not feel grateful. The Faith and Politics group - a distinguished body of pro-agreement Catholic and Protestant clergy - has concluded recently that many people feel that their "moral universe" has been "turned upside down." It is not a nice feeling.

This is why Mr Trimble explicitly stated, when last sharing a platform with President Clinton: "There cannot be a moral vacuum at the heart of the peace process. That is why I stand firm on the need for decommissioning." This is why Mr Trimble announced his decision to resign on July 1 if the second official target date for decommissioning is passed without action. Mr Trimble's action was dictated above all by a desire to show to the people of Ulster that, even if the other actors in the drama were not morally serious, he was.

It was an action that stunned the Northern Ireland Secretary, John Reid. His officials presumably recalled the young diplomat Niccolo Machiavelli's explanation in similar circumstances 500 years ago: "I am dealing with a prince who manages things for himself and it is therefore extremely difficult to know what he means to do."

In the same report, Machiavelli pointed out how weakness could be a kind of strength. Mr Trimble has been forced by the other players to carry the principal political burdens of the peace process: in consequence, everyone else has become more dependent on him. He has had to face an election without IRA decommissioning, because it suited the republicans to create division within Unionist ranks rather than their own. The Prime Minister, reluctantly, has been complicit in this development. Moreover, in the aftermath of the election, Mr Trimble had no firm reason to expect any positive developments.

But a point has now been reached where, in so far as any one man is carrying the strain and stresses of a complex political structure, it is Mr Trimble. Some in the Government simply assume that the strain will break him and that the whole process will shortly go "belly up". But it is a little early to say that.

Mr Trimble has made himself more popular than the agreement and, while his party has serious problems in certain localities, the broad picture in the polls is reassuring. Polls in Ulster traditionally underplay hardline sectarian sentiment, but, if they are not lying too much, Mr Trimble will still be a force after the election. This will give the British and Irish governments a chance to save the agreement - but they can do it only by facing up to the decommissioning question at last.

But do the governments have the qualities necessary to pull it off? At any rate, they have the negative vision of the meltdown in the Middle East to encourage them in their task.

The author is Professor of Irish Politics at Queen's University, Belfast

-- Anonymous, May 21, 2001