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12 July 2001 Edition

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Politics of the dramatic gesture

The last seven days of Irish and British peace process politics encapsulates the very heart of the peace process and the problems that once again threaten to overwhelm it.

It was a week when politicians in both states and important voices in the media returned to the rhetoric of attempting to lobby, pressurise and guilt Sinn Féin into the `politics of the dramatic gesture'. All that was needed to save the process was some republican goodwill. In practical terms this meant accepting the Police Act without amendments while at the same time asking the IRA to decommission its weapons unilaterally without any of the British commitments on demilitarisation being kept. The onus was on Sinn Féin to make a positive dramatic gesture while the week of negative dramatic gestures of the opposition parties was overlooked.

On Wednesday morning, 4 July, the people of Ireland woke to a reality they must no longer ignore. There is no UDA/UFF ceasefire. The killing of 19-year-old Ciarán Cummings showed that.

David Trimble made the outrageous claim on Thursday, 6 July, that Cummings had been killed by republicans because of a dispute over ``drugs or a number of the various forms of racketeering''. On Friday, Trimble withdrew his unfounded remarks, and this despicable event was glossed over by the establishment media and other politicians, only too eager to get back to focusing on blaming the peace process impasse on Sinn Féin.

Sunday brought perhaps the least disruptive Drumcree of the last seven years, even after previous days of UDA protests outside Drumcree church. The peace process participants were collecting in Weston Park Shropshire, for two days of intensive talks.

Even here, with all the participants in the talks gathering for three days of intensive negotiations, the focus was still on the need for a significant gesture by the IRA. A spokesperson for British Prime Minister Tony Blair said at the weekend: ``Everybody knows the issues. Everybody knows about the possible solutions. Everybody knows the solution is by implementing the Good Friday Agreement in full. The question is can we do it at this stage?''

If this was really the view of the British government, a number of questions spring to mind. What do they have to do to implement the Agreement in full and why are they backtracking from the commitments made on policing and decommissioning in both the Good Friday Agreement and last May's Hillsborough deal?

Why have they have not reacted to the disengagement of loyalist parties from the talks? Why have they not taken Trimble to task over his resignation as first minister and the implications that has for the full implementation of the Agreement?

It's time for the British to pay more than lip service to the Agreement.

An Phoblacht
44 Parnell Sq.
Dublin 1
Ireland