Sinn Fein

BELFAST, Northern Ireland -- After the recent breakthrough agreement in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, can Northern Ireland next?"Breakthrough" would be too strong a word for what is happening here.But significant shifts appear to be taking place in the positions of both the British government and Sinn Fein, the legal political wing of the outlawed Irish Republican Army.Such speculation has intensified since an announcement last weekend that secret talks between leaders of Sinn Fein and the mainly Roman Catholic Social Democratic and Labor Party had produced enough progress for them to submit a report to the Irish government in Dublin.

LONDON -- Is the Irish Republican Army about to call another cease-fire?The question is overshadowing the maneuvers taking place in advance of Monday's formal talks on the future of Northern Ireland.The IRA announced it was studying government documents that were part of the agreement to set up the talks -- a statement seen by many as a signal the IRA could be evaluating its cease-fire policy.Previously, the group had said there was little chance of a cease-fire before the talks opened.Based on results of a May 30 election, nine political parties are scheduled to be represented at the talks, to be chaired by former U.S. Senate Majority Leader George Mitchell.

This is an excerpt of a recent Chicago Tribune editorial.WHEN THE British and Irish governments temporarily ousted Sinn Fein from Northern Ireland peace talks, Sinn Fein president Gerry Adams said the move lacked "any sense of justice or fairness." In fact, that is what their decision was all about.Mr. Adams' protests notwithstanding, Sinn Fein is the political arm of the guerrilla Irish Republican Army, which Northern Ireland's police blame for the terrorist killings of two Protestant men in Belfast last month.

In return for respectability in the United States, including fund-raising for Sinn Fein, Gerry Adams allowed himself to be brow-beaten.First, Irish Prime Minister John Bruton and then President Clinton admonished the IRA to turn in its arms caches. They were echoing what Prime Minister John Major of Britain had been demanding before Mr. Adams was invited to the White House -- all in an attempt to show they were not undermining the British effort.Sinn Fein leader Adams just shrugged it off on the ground that he has no authority over IRA weapons.

THE AGREEMENT of British Prime Minister John Major and Irish Prime Minister John Bruton on a path to the future for Northern Ireland brings hope to its 1.6 million people. The two governments have posted a timetable for the peace bus to leave the station. Whether Sinn Fein and its bomb-throwing affiliate, the IRA, are on that bus is up to them.The plan gives Sinn Fein and the IRA two things they wanted. One is a firm date for the start of what will be in effect a constitutional convention, June 10. The other is abandonment of the requirement that the IRA begin to destroy its weapons before Sinn Fein takes part.

LONDON -- After not accepting a telephone call from President Clinton for more than a week, Prime Minister John Major relented yesterday afternoon, and, in a 25-minute conversation, promptly struck a tough stance on talks with Sinn Fein, the political wing of the Irish Republican Army.Mr. Major insisted that Sinn Fein had not yet made a firm enough commitment to "decommission" the arms of the IRA to enter into high-level talks with the British government, according to an account of the conversation provided by the prime minister's office.

BELFAST, Northern Ireland -- The deadline to find a compromise to create a power-sharing government in Northern Ireland passed without agreement last night, but British and Irish leaders pressed on into the morning seeking a deal to revive the stalled peace process.Protestant unionists would not budge on their refusal to form a government with Sinn Fein, the Irish Republican Army's political wing, until the IRA begins turning in arms, while Sinn Fein was unable to get a formal commitment from the IRA that it would begin disarming.

THE BALL is in IRA-Sinn Fein's court. They can comply with the obligation Sinn Fein undertook in the Good Friday Accord of 1998 that its Irish Republican Army "decommission" its weapons by May 2000. Or they can forfeit Sinn Fein's standing as a political party fit to participate in governing Northern Ireland. The British government's formula for suspending the embryonic home rule regime rightly takes David Trimble, Unionist Party leader and first minister of that regime, off the hook. Judging whether the terms of the Good Friday Accord have been met is the reponsibility of the British and Irish governments, not of one provincial political party.

LONDON - Prime Minister Tony Blair told Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams yesterday that Irish republicans had to abandon their "dual strategy" of combining paramilitary activity with participation in politics if peace in Northern Ireland is to be assured. "We still in Belfast and elsewhere have got pockets of real and totally unacceptable violence, we have got a situation where there is still a mix between the political and the paramilitary strategies of the republicans," Blair said. He made his remarks to ITV news after an hour-long crisis meeting at 10 Downing St. with Adams and other leaders of Sinn Fein, the political wing of the Irish Republican Army.

EVERYTHING in recent British, Irish and Northern Ireland elections has gone right for Sinn Fein, the Irish Republican Army's political alter ego. The British Conservatives lost power. The Irish Republic's Prime Minister John Bruton, who rebuked Sinn Fein, tumbled out of power in the election last Friday. In Belfast, a Catholic and nationalist coalition of which Sinn Fein is part will run City Hall for the first time.For the IRA "military" group and Sinn Fein, this represents a high point.