Peace process - North pays for Paisley’s inflexibility

The ultimate Christmas gift that the people of the North could ever have imagined, a final end to IRA paramilitarism and the reality of peace, was yesterday snatched from them by the bitter intransigence of Ian Paisley and his Democratic Unionist Party.

The IRA had given the Irish and British Governments a commitment to undertake complete decommissioning before Christmas, to be witnessed by one Catholic and one Protestant clergyman, as well as General John de Chastelain of the Independent International Commission on Decommissioning.

A statement from that body confirmed that by two acts of decommissioning, the entire stockpile of IRA weapons would have been destroyed this month.

That was not enough for Mr Paisley.

If Sinn Féin and the IRA had agreed to the publication of photographs, would that still have been enough for Mr Paisley, or would he then have insisted on being the Protestant cleric there to witness the historic act, imposing the ultimate humiliation on the Taigs?

To be facetious, maybe that was the other problem to which Tánaiste Mary Harney referred to in the Dáil yesterday morning.

Both Taoiseach Bertie Ahern and British Prime Minister Tony Blair had produced proposals which would have seen a truly historic day arrive. Gone would be the IRA threat and in its place the restoration of the Executive, power-sharing and a resolution of the policing issue.

Peace and normal political stability was what Mr Paisley denied the long-suffering, strife-torn people of the North who saw a new beginning cruelly whipped from their grasp.

Officially, it was disagreement over photographic evidence of decommissioning which Mr Paisley was insisting upon that wrecked the deal, or a series of photographs which the public realised he wanted.

But it is not unreasonable to question if the DUP demanded photographic evidence with the certain knowledge that it would be a step too far for people they did not want to share power with anyway.

By any measure, the IRA were prepared to ‘jump’, as UUP leader David Trimble had often invited them to do. When they did, it was into the vacuum of the “no surrender” mindset which has always been an albatross around the neck of progress there.

The Taoiseach was right when he said they were on the brink of an agreement that would have been unthinkable not long ago and that the process had surged forward.

Instead, the North’s future is shrouded in uncertainty.