By: Luis Luque Alvarez
e-mail: luque@jrebelde.cip.cu
A CubaNews translation. Edited by Walter Lippmann.
Original:

http://www.juventudrebelde.cu/opinion/2006-10-06/irlanda-del-norte-el-ira-se-comporta-los-pretextos-se-acaban/

Sinn Fein pro-independence party leaders Gerry Adams,
Gerry Kelly and Martin Mc Guinness, right before a
meeting to discuss the Monitoring Commission’s report, Photo: AP

The last report of the Independent Monitoring Commission must have come as a real shock to those who regret that there are less and less reasons to keep the fire of violence burning in Northern Ireland. The said Commission found that the Irish Republican Army (IRA), Northern Ireland’s pro-independence military arm, is not involved in terrorism and increasingly renouncing the use of violence.

Submitted on October 4, the text adds that IRA’s leaders “continue instructing its members to relinquish physical force”, and have reached the point where they expel from its ranks whoever breaks this rule, not to mention that they have dismantled the organization’s “military” structure and stopped recruiting sympathizers. In fact, “its ongoing inaction has actually eroded its capacity”, the report underscores.

We are faced then with a new test of IRA’s will, “stated in its communiqué of the summer of 2005”, to prioritize the political channels to reach its goal: to integrate Northern Ireland into the Republic of Ireland, its natural environment, from which it remains apart as a result of the United Kingdom’s long-lasting colonialist whims.

The new report of this Commission that London and Dublin established in 2004 must help convince the most headstrong Unionists, “advocates of Northern Ireland’s current British status”, that the language of bombs is now water under the bridge. A September, 2005 report submitted by International Disarmament Commission observers Harold Good, a Protestant pastor, and Alec Reid, a Catholic priest, attested to the seriousness of IRA’s decision to lay down arms, something “we have confirmed without a shadow of doubt”, they said.

Protestant reverend Ian Paisley, leader of the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) and a fierce enemy of any peace agreement, challenged such assertion at first, but is now claiming that the Republicans’ praiseworthy attitude, as the Monitoring Commission described it, has been only made possible by the “pressures” of its formation.

He persists, however, “as he has done since the 2003 elections”, in his refusal to sit at an Assembly of powers shared with pro-independence members of the Sinn Fein party, given their reservations about Northern Ireland’s police service. And Paisley washes his hands of anything with a smell of normalization, arrangement, coexistence: “The IRA–Sinn Fein –as he likes to call them– support neither the police nor the rule of law”. In other words, “unfit” to coexist with the DUP...

As far as this gentleman is concerned, each and every gesture by his counterpart in favor of peace seems to have fallen on stony ground. What if Sinn Fein starts coming up with its own conditions? The Commission’s report itself, to take a case in point, remarks that several pro-British paramilitary groups, such as UVF (Ulster Volunteer Force), LVF (Loyalist Volunteer Force) and UDA (Ulster Defense Association), keep committing crimes.

A quick glance at the latter’s dossier would be a good example: “UDA members are still strongly implicated in a wide-ranging string of other serious crimes, including drug dealing, forgery selling, robbery and extortion”, never mind that they continue recruiting members and intent on getting weapons.

Are these the "spotless" credentials that IRA’s antagonists can show? Is anyone willing to bet a beer none of these criminals are in Paisley’s fan club?

The unionist chieftain’s fits notwithstanding, both the British crown and the Irish government have called the parties to seize the opportunity to advance toward restoring Northern Island’s Assembly and autonomy before November 24. Should they fail to meet this deadline, the deputies might as well kiss their salaries goodbye. An agreement must be reached one way or another, London will say.

Not exactly bad news, so no more excuses.