MALACHI O’Doherty believes the IRA has become no more than a Sinn Fein bargaining card for the September negotiations, while Fergus Finlay sees Gerry Adams’ statement on the IRA as an invitation to the DUP to engage. It may be the start of a long awkward dance, he argues, and with both the DUP and Sinn Fein’s determined to avoid a split (at all costs?), while success is far from guaranteed.
Finlay writes: The IRA will not disband for ever: in their terms, they can’t do that, since there remain two jurisdictions on the island. If they do decide to stand down the volunteers, it will be done in a way, and in language, that binds no future generation. It will be done in ways that remind people that the defence of their own people will remain a paramount objective. And it won’t be done as part of a deal, but in their own time.
The IRA won’t want to issue a unilateral statement, lest it be dismissed out of hand. And they won’t want to be part of a negotiation, lest that be trumpeted by their enemies as a defeat. So the same complicated and arcane architecture that we have witnessed several times already will have to begin again.
Whatever about the timing, the language must be clear this time. No more fudges will work.
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