The time is right for Adams to confront old republican demons

BRITISH Prime Minister Tony Blair was explicit about the assurances that the IRA have to give if The Good Friday Agreement is to progress at this stage.

Even though Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness have been insisting that the IRA statement "was clear an unambiguous", they have engaged in so much prevarication for so long that they appear to have become semantically dyslexic.

We still do not know exactly what the IRA said, but there was an obvious implication in Blair's complaint that instead of expressing clearly the organisation's determination to implement the terms of the Good Friday Agreement, it stated that its strategies and disciplines would not be inconsistent with the agreement.

The use of such double negatives is the language of obfuscation and nobody should be surprised that it has given rise to uneasiness, notwithstanding the petulant outrage expressed by Martin McGuinness following Blair's comments.

The British Prime Minister specified three questions that Sinn Féin needs to answer:

"When the IRA say that their strategies and disciplines will not be inconsistent with the Good Friday Agreement, does that mean an end to all activity inconsistent with the Good Friday Agreement, including targeting, procurement of weapons, so- called punishment beatings and so forth?

Secondly, when they say that they are committed to putting arms beyond use, through the Decommissioning Commission, does that mean all arms so that the process is complete?

And thirdly, when they say that they support the Good Friday Agreement and want it to work, does that mean that if the two governments and the other parties fulfil their obligations under the Good Friday Agreement and the joint declaration, that that means the complete and final closure of the conflict?"

Tony Blair accepts that Adams and McGuinness are sincere about the process and anxious to make it work, and that they have demonstrated their willingness to work with unionists in order to ensure this.

The Prime Minister is not demanding any specific form of words from the republicans; he is just insisting on clarity.

"They don't have to be the words that the two governments think are the most clear," he explained. "Any form of words will do, but the words have to be clear."

All of the people of this island are entitled to have unequivocal answers to those questions, because we should have an assurance that the Provisional IRA are irrevocably committed to the democratic process.

When the troubles began in the late 1960s republicans could legitimately contend that the democratic process in the North was perverted by gerrymandering and blatant discrimination.

The British made disastrous mistakes in backing the introduction of internment by the Stormont regime against, essentially, the nationalist community alone, and by condoning the barbarous behaviour of security forces in mistreating the internees, who were never charged, much less convicted of any offence.

People may argue over whether that mistreatment amounted to torture, as described by the European Commission on Human Rights, or just "inhuman and degrading treatment" in the opinion of the European Court of Human Rights.

Things were made worse by Bloody Sunday and the contemptible whitewash conducted by Lord Chief Justice Widgery, whose tribunal has been largely discredited by the ongoing Saville inquiry.

The British railroaded a number of Irishmen on trumped-up charges of involvement in the Birmingham and Guilford bombings. The Crown forces engaged in a shoot-to-kill policy in the 1980s, and they sought to cover this up with the sordid Stalker affair in which they targeted their own citizens.

Metropolitan Police Commissioner John Stevens concluded last week that Crown agents were involved in collusion with the murderers of Patrick Finucane and Brian Adam Lambert in the late 1980s. That is what inevitably happens when police take it upon themselves to act as judge, jury and executioner.

Of course, members of the IRA also engaged in shoot-to-kill, even targeting totally innocent people like Jean McConville, a widowed mother of ten who was dragged from her home by the Provos.

She was murdered simply because she had done the Christian thing in helping a wounded British soldier who had come to her door for help after he was shot.

If the British had ever stooped that low in killing somebody for such Christian behaviour, we would all have been outraged. They didn't, but the Provos did, which is why decent people should insist on the assurances now being sought.

There is no room in a democratic society for paramilitary forces threatening to take the law into their own hands, if they do not get their way politically. If that is not what the IRA is doing, let it say so clearly and unequivocally.

Richard Haass, the American envoy, suggested that Sinn Féin's problem is a fear that the Provisional IRA will split over this issue. Maybe Adams and company are afraid, but they shouldn't be.

Back in 1922 the IRA split over the Treaty and the majority went with Cumann na nGaedheal, which held power for the next ten years.

The remnants of the IRA split again in 1926 with the majority going with Fianna Fáil, which replaced Cumann na nGaedheal in 1932 and remained in power for 16 years.

The Provisional IRA has had five years to evaluate the benefits of the Good Friday Agreement. Republican prisoners many of whom had been convicted of the most serious crimes were released after serving only a fraction of their prison sentences.

Last weekend at Arbour Hill, Bertie Ahern quoted from a speech that Eamon de Valera made on the same spot in April, 1933. The Long Fellow quoted from the Easter Proclamation stipulating that we should "cherish all the children of the nation equally."

He went on to say that we should "make ourselves 'oblivious of the differences carefully fostered by an alien government,' " and that we should adhere resolutely to Wolfe Tone's "exhortation to 'abolish the memory of all past dissensions.' "

It was a pity was that people did not heed his advice.

Eamon de Valera's 1933 speech provided a prophetic blueprint for the next 15 years of what would become the longest running government in our history.

He outlined his determination to secure a republican form of government in the 26 Counties by removing all symbols of foreign domination.

"Let it be made clear that we yield no willing assent to any form or symbol that is out of keeping with Ireland's right as a sovereign nation," he explained.

"Let us remove these forms one by one, so that this State that we control may be a Republic in fact and that, when the time comes, the proclaiming of the Republic may involve no more than a ceremony, the formal confirmation of a status already attained."

In the following years his government abolished the Treaty oath, replaced the Governor General with an elected President, secured the transfer of the Treaty-ports and the abrogation of Britain's right to Irish bases.

Any lingering doubts about our independence were dispelled by staying out of the second world war.

Thus, when the Republic of Ireland was formally declared in 1949, it was indeed merely "the formal confirmation of a status already attained," as de Valera had promised.

I wonder if Bertie noticed that the Long Fellow had kept his promise!