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Bitter enemies in Northern Ireland finally share a common goal: a government

by Stryker Mcguire

This year’s drumcree march was peaceful

The summer "marching season" is one of those Northern Ireland tribal rituals that mystify outsiders. Throughout July the Orange Order, a Protestant fraternal organization, sponsors dozens of marches celebrating, among other things, unionism and victories in battle over Roman Catholic enemies.

In recent years the most notorious march has been the one upto the tiny hilltop church at Drumcree. Its traditional return route takes the Orangemen through what is now a Catholic neighbourhood in Portadown.

In 1997 the marchers' perceived triumphalism enraged Catholic republicans and triggered three days of mayhem. One man, a Protestant, killed himself as he dismantled a bomb of his own making.

This year Drumcree was a different story. Downhill from the church, the Police Service of Northern Ireland - formerly known as the Royal Ulster Constabulary, Europe's most heavily armed police force- erected a relatively modest barricade to cut off the Orangemen's route through Catholic areas.

For their part, the Orangemen had put up a cordon of their own in front of the police barrier - single strand of rope with warning sign to their marchers: Please do not pass this point. Dark-suited, bowler-hatted loyalists marched down to the rope, stopped and politely turned around.

When politicians in Northern Ireland call this the "summer of love," they're only half joking. After a series of setbacks since the 1998 Good Friday Agreement, a constructive calm has settled over Ulster. Sectarian violence has all but vanished.

The political situation looks dreadful; for one thing, home rule has been suspended for more than a year and a half. But beneath the surface there's talk that the two leading parties, Sinn Fein and the Democratic Unionist Party, will soon reach "the deal of all deals" to get the suspended government up and running again.

"They are in a better position to do it now than they ever have been," a source close to British Prime Minister Tony Blair told Newsweek last week.

Such a breakthrough would be the most important political development in Northern Ireland since the peace pact was signed six years ago. The local government made possible under that agreement has been out of business since October 2002, brought down by a republican spy scandal and endless partisan squabbling. London has been running things in the meantime.

Members of the Northern Ireland Assembly-MLAs- have embarrassingly little to do for the money they get (during suspension, 70 percent of full pay). In the tomblike quite of parliament Buildings outside Belfast, Democratic Unionist MLA Jeffrey Donaldson said last week, "We recognize that you can't go on indefinitely like this."

If a deal is done - a big if-it will be done by Northern Ireland's political extremes. In assembly elections last November, the erstwhile mainstream parties were beaten by the hard-liners - Sinn Fein, the political arm of the Irish Republican Army, and the DUP led by the loyalist, anti-"popery" firebrand Ian Paisley.

Once implacable enemies, the two groups have been brought together by the common goal of all political parties: power. Both sides know that their electoral victories don't mean much as long as there is no government to run.

The UP still won't talk face to face with Sinn Fein (they negotiate through intermediaries), but the parties are speaking the same language.

There's talk that 'the deal of all deals' could soon be reached.

In an interview with NEWSWEEK last week, a senior Sinn Fein politician refused to criticise the DUP and expressed hope - repeatedly - of reaching a deal: "Its hope based on my view, speaking personally, that there are intelligent, sensible people within the (DUP) leadership who recognise that the way forward is for Sinn Fein and DUP to be in government together. It's matter not (of) if we'll do it; it's a matter of when we'll do it. And I want to be done now, this year."

Both sides downplay the idea that they can't forget a deal. "I think that the increased political mandates (from the November ballot) impose an increased imperative on the political parties to do the business, sort out the problems and give leadership," said the Sinn Fein politician.

For his part, after the latest round of negotiations in London, Paisley said he could "detect the faint outline and context of a way forward that would be agreeable." "Our position," says Donaldson, "is, if the deal is right, we're happy to reach it. And if we do a deal, we'll do a deal that will stick."

The obstacles are formidable. There will be no deal unless "decommissioning" - the disarming of paramilitaries - goes much further than it has since 1998. In April the Independent Monitoring Commission found that all republican and loyalist paramilitary organisations were still active.

The DUP is not linked to any paramilitary group. If Sinn Fein wants a deal, its leaders must "persuade the IRA to really give up paramilitarism," said the Blair source. "Unionist politicians are reluctant to do a deal with an organisation that has a terrorist army behind it."

Two factors, though, are working in favour of a rapproachment. For one thing, Northern Ireland is much more peaceful. Police blamed political violence for 11 deaths in the province of 1.7 million people last year.

In 1972, the bloodiest year of the so-called Troubles, there were 470 such deaths. Second, there's the Blair factor.

Though his Labour Party is all but assured of victory at the next election (probably a year from now), Blair, who is at low tide politically, is expected to step aside for a new party leader sometime afterward. The Irish government, according to sources, is particularly anxious for a deal to be done while Blair is still around.

As a team, Blair and his Irish counterpart, Bertie Ahern, have been pushing and prodding. Northern Ireland politicians toward accommodation for seven years now. "If these two guys don't do it," says an Irish government source," it would be difficult for somebody else to." The summer of love would then look like another one of those agonizing Northern Ireland false dawns.

With Liat Radliffe in London and Barry White in Belfast.

Courtesy: The Newsweek

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