Step too far puts history on hold

“TODAY is truly different. I do not think it. I know it.” Taoiseach Bertie Ahern’s emphatic, almost defiant, words captured the tone of yesterday’s joint press conference with Tony Blair yesterday in Belfast.

Yes this was different. This time both leaders were determined to supplant the language of failure, of false dawns, the kind of dog days when only hope and hysteria rhymed.

As Mr Blair neatly summarised: “What has been achieved has been remarkable but it is not yet complete.”

This time they had evidence. It came in the form of the 20-page blueprint for restoring devolution they presented to Sinn Féin and the DUP on the weekend of November 20.

That, said Mr Ahern, represented a “dramatic surge towards closure”.

Naturally, the one weasel issue that prevented a historic breakthrough - demands by the DUP of a photographic record of decommissioning - predominated at the conference.

But any close reading of it would show that we are nearing journey’s end.

Six years ago, Sinn Féin argued that no clause of the Good Friday Agreement could hold the IRA to destroy its weapons.

In a literal reading, it was correct. The Agreement contained fudges and ambiguities. For a long time afterwards, the IRA would not be swayed from its “not an ounce, not a bullet” mantra. To paraphrase Mr Blair, what seemed unobtainable has become obtainable. The IRA has decommissioned three times.

Yesterday’s commitment from the IRA was of quantum dimensions. Not alone did it agree to destroy its entire arsenal within three weeks, it also acceded to it being witnessed by two independent observers - and to an inventory of what had been destroyed.

“All the gear would go,” an IRA source said bluntly this week. And clearly, so would the IRA itself. If a deal had been struck we would have heard the following from the Provos at 10am yesterday: “This creates the conditions for the IRA to move into a new mode that reflects its determination to see the transition to a totally peaceful society brought to a successful conclusion.”

This statement was of profound significance. If the IRA had agreed to that at Hillsborough in October 2003, the summit would have been scaled. But this is the sequel and unfortunately for SF it is The Empire Strikes Back with Ian Paisley as Darth Vader.

This newspaper has never shirked from criticising Sinn Féin’s duplicity. But in one sense, it’s hard not to have some sympathy for its current position.

Mr Adams argued yesterday that the photograph commitment was never deliverable to the IRA.

But clause five of the proposed statement from the decommissioning body made clear that both Governments had made a call that it might just be.

“The IRA representative has told us that the IRA will have photographs of the weapons and materiel involved taken, in the presence of independent observers,” it read hopefully.

The problem for SF is that everybody else has now ganged up on it. All the unionists demand it. The SDLP’s Alex Atwood yesterday said it was a requirement. And now the inclusion of the clause means the Irish Government believes so too.

But this seemingly minor stumbling block is now cast against a bigger symbolic background. For republicans to concede would be to concede to the taunts of Ian Paisley that the IRA “needs to wear its sackcloth and ashes”.

In his final words yesterday, the Taoiseach said the latest process began after Christmas. “I believe it will not end in the Waterfront today.” No shortage of hope. But the history part still remains elusive.