New, Fragile Hope for Ulster

The Irish Republican Army’s announcement of a cease-fire in the Northern Ireland conflict has brought renewed hopes of peace to the troubled region. Certainly prospects look better today than last week, or six months ago, and that is cause for hope. But the road to a lasting peace is still mined with formidable obstacles. A great deal of political courage and determination by the major players will be required to resolve the conflict.

Britain’s new Labor government, under Tony Blair, deserves much of the credit for the turnabout. Empowered by a decisive election victory, the prime minister has been able to set a new political course. He and Mo Mowlan, the minister in charge of Northern Ireland, have given impetus to the peace process, forging a new political framework in collaboration with Washington, the Irish government in Dublin, John Hume’s Roman Catholic SDLP party in Ulster, and Sinn Fein, the political arm of the militant IRA.

It hasn’t been easy to get to this point. Irish nationalists Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness have invested quite a bit of their political capital to obtain this cease-fire. Their credibility depends on whether all parties concerned abide by it.

The greatest pressure now falls on David Trimble of the Protestant Ulster Unionist Party, the swing leader among the Ulster Protestants. The Rev. Ian Paisley and Robert McCartney, hard-line Ulster Protestants, have divorced themselves from the peacemaking.

The cease-fire will be deemed credible if it holds for the next six weeks. If Trimble accedes to talk peace with the Sinn Fein delegation at sessions set for September in Belfast’s Stormont Castle and drops his demand that the IRA turn over some weapons in the interim, progress can be made. But also hanging over peace hopes is the reality that the IRA has broken cease-fires in the past, and each instance has eroded confidence in a final settlement. This initiative has more momentum than previous ones, however. All parties will be served if it is pushed through.