It certainly felt more like sunset than dawn in Ulster last week as the rickety peace process ground to what the spin-meisters soothingly called a “pause.” Confronted with the failure of the IRA to move on disarmament, the British government suspended the 72-day-old power-sharing government in Northern Ireland. Ulster, after a hopeful stint in running its own affairs, was back under direct rule from London again.
But 24 hours after the suspension, there was a glimmer of good news. The International Commission on Decommissioning, which had been in 11th-hour talks with the IRA, reported “valuable progress.” The IRA, the commission reported, had asserted that it would “consider how to put arms and explosives beyond use.” Just how and when this might happen–the deadline for disarmament set by the 1998 agreement is May 22–remains up in the air. One clue came last week from Martin McGuinness, a former IRA commander who represents Sinn Fein in the suspended government. He said the IRA might consider “self-destructing” their arms and explosives. This, he said, “takes away the whole business of surrender,” which the IRA apparently finds so abhorrent.
