Davy Adams gives his view of what went wrong earlier this week in today’s Irish Times. He believes the only chance the UUP has of a flying start to the election, is for the IRA to release the General from his confidentiality agreement.
By Davy Adams
The IRA had invoked the decommissioning confidentiality rule and, in so doing, had brought about the demise of this latest initiative. It had just ground to an inglorious halt before our eyes.
Everyone clearly understood that Unionism, in its entirety, needed itemised detail on decommissioning if it was to endorse the reinstatement of the executive. Worse still, it had been led to believe that this time De Chastelain would provide it.
Irrational as it may seem – and despite the �war is over� statements from Sinn Fein and the IRA – the unionist electorate would feel conned.
David Trimble and his colleagues had no option but, as he described it, �put the sequence on hold,� in the hope that more details of the amount decommissioned would be made available – he would have been destroyed otherwise. As it was already, his enemies within unionism could hardly contain their delight as they roundly condemned him for being so foolish as to trust republicans.
Despite this undermining of his position, Trimble and his negotiating team must be eternally grateful that they had refused to commit themselves before General De Chastelain had reported. If they had gone earlier in the sequence, the damage would be well nigh irreparable.
So what went wrong?
It�s pretty obvious that the IRA lost its nerve. They and the Sinn Fein leadership were well aware that David Trimble needed much more clarity than before on acts of decommissioning if he was to have any chance of taking his party and the unionist electorate with him.
He must have been led to believe this would be provided, or he never would have gone along with Tuesday�s initiative. Indeed, Martin McGuinness, in a recent BBC interview, said he was aware of unionist needs on the decommissioning issue and felt these could be dealt with to their satisfaction.
The IRA must have gambled on doing just enough to satisfy moderate nationalist opinion � and hopefully the two governments � while at the same time causing as little internal upset as possible. Selling decommissioning in largely abstract form to the volunteers has probably been difficult enough for them, without the added problems that an itemised listing by General De Chastelain would bring.
They further gambled on the Ulster Unionists being caught up and swept along by the momentum � they miscalculated badly. Tony Blair, Bertie Ahern and, if his face was anything to go by, General De Chastelain all expected more transparency. The IRA, by failing to deliver on widely held and clear understandings, let them all down.
Releasing De Chastelain from his confidentiality agreement is the only way they can hope to make amends. Either that or they have deliberately set out to destroy pro-agreement unionism � and might just have succeeded.
First published in the Irish Times on Friday 24th October 2003
Mick is founding editor of Slugger. He has written papers on the impacts of the Internet on politics and the wider media and is a regular guest and speaking events across Ireland, the UK and Europe. Twitter: @MickFealty
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