Last month former Sen. George Mitchell said of the Irish peace talks he is chairing: “There is a pattern here of, for every step forward, a step backward occurs. But the general direction is the right one.”
Wrong, George. That’s not a direction; that’s standing still. But standing still, it seems, is what the process aimed at bringing a peaceful and lasting political settlement in Northern Ireland has been doing for more than a year.
There’s reason to hope, though, that the talks may be on a more productive course when they reconvene Sept. 15 in Belfast.
Mitchell’s goal has been to get the British and Irish governments and the major political parties in Northern Ireland (also known as Ulster) to gather around the negotiating table and work out a political future for Northern Ireland. No problem with the two governments, but just getting everyone else pulled up to the table has proved an almost insurmountable task.
That may be changing. The outlawed Irish Republican Army has declared a cease-fire, which, if it holds, means Sinn Fein, the IRA’s political wing, will be allowed for the first time to participate in the talks.
The IRA has been waging guerrilla war for years to oust the British from Northern Ireland and return the territory, with its Protestant majority, to the overwhelmingly Catholic Republic of Ireland.
That’s what makes Sinn Fein’s role in the negotiating process significant: Without it, no real peace can be assured because of the threat of IRA violence.
But when Sinn Fein walked in, two hardline, pro-British, Protestant parties walked out. They simply refuse to join in talks with Sinn Fein, knowing that any real negotiating will likely result in a diminution of British influence in Northern Ireland.
The largest and most influential Protestant party, though, has not walked out. The Ulster Unionists, representing about 30 percent of the population, have said they will not negotiate with Sinn Fein until the IRA surrenders its arsenal, which the IRA has vowed not to do until a peace agreement is signed. But the Ulster Unionists haven’t walked away.
The task before Mitchell and the British and Irish governments is to offer them a face-saving way to stay in the talks without causing Sinn Fein to walk out. Both parties want to be there, so some deft compromising may do the trick.
When negotiations resume in September, Sinn Fein may be in one room and the Ulster Unionists in another, similar to the proximity talks that led to the Dayton accord on Bosnia. While it is possible to be physically under the same roof and politically miles apart, that’s still closer than the two parties have gotten before.
With deft work by Mitchell and their fellow negotiators, these longtime foes may begin to move their chairs closer and closer to the wall that divides them. Only when the door in that wall opens will peace become a face-to-face proposition–and a real possibility for the people of Ulster.
