IRISH AMERICAN groups hoping for greater influence with the White House and its Republican opponents in an election year are having mixed fortunes.

Both the Democratic and Republican policy planks support the peace process and the MacBride Principles on non discrimination. However, a speech by former Secretary of State, Jim Baker, at a Republic an convention, and President Clinton's refusal to block the extradition of a former Maze prison escaper, Jimmy Smyth, have enraged Irish American activists.

What is more difficult to assess is how representative the most outspoken activists are of the bulk of Irish Americans and how much they can influence their votes in the upcoming presidential and congressional elections.

President Clinton's identification with the peace process and tremendous reception in Ireland, North and South, last year will certainly win him votes in the Irish American community. The efforts of Washington based Irish American Republicans to make inroads into that support and win some of it for Bob Dole have had an unexpected setback following the Baker speech.

It was only two sentences in a three page speech but it may have wiped out a year's work by the National Assembly of Irish American Republicans (NAIR) and the support it receives from prominent Republican congressmen such as Ben Gilman, Peter King and James Walsh.

Baker, who served under presidents Reagan and Bush, was rousing the convention delegates with a scathing indictment of President Clinton's foreign policy in the Middle East, Bosnia, central Europe and Russia. But early in the speech he made one reference to Britain, saying: "We have also seen a representative of the IRA hosted in the White House just prior to the resumption of terrorist bombings in London. The result has been the worst relationship with our closest ally, Britain, since the Boston tea party."

The Irish American Unity Conference (IAUC) issued a statement asking Baker would he "dictate Dole's Irish policy should he win the presidency?"

It described his "outburst" as "part of the pro British mindset that has been an obsession of US administrations for years" and called on Irish Americans to express their outrage to the Dole campaign.

Yet Dole met Gerry Adams before President Clinton and fully approved of a US visa for the Sinn Fein president. Dole met Adams in his Senate majority leader office in October, 1994, just after the IRA ceasefire.

Dole is reported as saying that if he were president, Adams would not have to use the backdoor to get into the White House.

Congressman Peter King, a strong supporter of Adams, was at that meeting. He told The Irish Times yesterday that Baker's comments were "totally inappropriate" and there were some boos from the floor of the convention when he made them.

King bluntly claims that Baker is now "on the outside" and does not represent the Dole campaign policy on the Irish situation. He also says that Dole's new running mate, Jack Kemp, who served in the Bush cabinet, "despises Baker".

The White House press secretary of the time, Marlin Fitzwater, in his book Call the Briefing, describes one incident where Baker used a four letter word to Kemp who had to be physically restrained from punching the secretary of state.

But anecdotes aside, Baker's jibe at President Clinton about receiving Adams at the White House probably - stems more from Baker's once close relationship with his former British counterpart, Douglas Hurd, who, with the British Prime Minister, John Major, had wanted George Bush to defeat Clinton's bid for the White House.

It should be noted, however, that the Arizona senator and war hero, John McCain, who is very close to Dole and nominated him in San Diego, has also been critical of the Clinton policy towards Sinn Fein. In Foreign Policy magazine this summer, McCain took an even stronger line than Baker, accusing President Clinton of "severely straining relations with London" by his concessions to Sinn Fein and Adams.

But the resumption of the IRA bombing in Britain and the threat of more has weakened Sinn Fein's position both with the White House and with the Republican contender Terrorism and bombing of cities is equally anathema to Clinton and Dole, both of whom have pledged to hunt down those who take American lives.

In his statement last February welcoming the announcement of the setting of a date for all party talks in Northern Ireland, Dole urged Sinn Fein "to support an immediate IRA ceasefire".

He added: "The future of Northern Ireland lies in negotiation, not in violence. After decades of conflict, the people of Northern Ireland are united in their desire for peace - they deserve peace . . . the pursuit of peace in Northern Ireland must remain an important US foreign policy priority."

President Clinton's rejection of appeals from the Irish National Caucus of Father Sean McManus, the Irish Northern Aid Committee and the IAUC to block the extradition of Smyth after his unsuccessful appeal to the Supreme Court is also an indication of how the climate has changed since the resumption of the IRA bombing campaign.

If the IRA ceasefire was still in place, President Clinton would almost certainly not have allowed Smyth to be extradited, according to one well place source, who says that an end to extraditions of those, sought for terrorist offences was part of the American contribution to the peace process.

THE difficulties Irish American groups are having in keeping abreast of White House policy on Northern Ireland is shown by recent press statements from the IAUC. On August 12th, its president, Daniel O'Kennedy, released the text of his letter to President Clinton thanking him for his "prayers and get well wishes" during his recent heart operation and urging President Clinton to keep his pre election promise that he would not allow any "political" interference in future extradition cases.

Yesterday, the IAUC released a statement by Smyth saying "the closer to the White House we climbed, the less concern we found for justice and the more we found for political gain and for the feelings of an ally condemned throughout the world for its abuse of human rights".

So both the White House and the Republicans are being accused by the more activist Irish American groups of pandering to the old "ally", Britain. But what the groups are not acknowledging, at least in their statements, is that for both President Clinton and Dole, the end of the IRA ceasefire changed the rules of the game.

While bombs go off, US politicians, in power or out, will not give the IRA or its supporters any comfort.