THE parting remark of Senator George Mitchell before he left Northern Ireland last month was a wry comment on the intense analysis of words he had encountered there "words being acceptable or unacceptable based upon who uses them".
He had been taken aback by the brazen custom of many Northern "torture one poor word ten thousand ways", as Dryden put it three centuries ago.
In the shadow boxing between unionist and nationalist figureheads, the verbal destruction or distortion of meaning is just another weapon in the contest, and it has become even more intense since Mr Mitchell's departure.
It is most frequently used to thwart progress towards a situation where each side will have to show their hands and expose to universal scrutiny the bare bones of their case.
All sides, including British ministers, use this technique when cornered, much as warships put up smoke screens to steam out of trouble. Sinn Fein has used it to cloak an ambivalent attitude to IRA violence and to avoid having to grapple with awkward general principles like "consent".
Unionists, however, employ it to mask their deep reluctance to enter the decision making phase of the necessary process of change and compromise which must be at the heart of a political settlement.
That is why the word "negotiations" has provoked so much resistance. The UUP leader first promoted his elections proposal as the only way all parties could be brought into "discussions" in advance of decommissioning arms. This was varied to "debate", and only later, under pressure, did he admit that even after elections, decommissioning would still be necessary before there could be "serious negotiations".
The unionist description of the proposed elected body has, likewise, been transmuted step by step from the term "assembly", to "forum", and finally to the currently favoured term "peace convention".
The British have not been as singularly word shy, but have allowed confusion to proliferate in other ways. The Northern Secretary, Sir Patrick Mayhew, has spoken of the proposed elections as "elections to a negotiating body". But this week his Prime Minister, Mr Major, spoke of the purpose of an elective process as being "to lead directly and speedily to negotiations ...
It is little wonder that Mr Dick Spring yesterday recognised and at last insisted on the need to pin down "the basis and format of negotiations". All of the parties have blatantly attempted so far, at all costs, to formally define "negotiations" or what might actually be negotiated.
Sinn Fein's rationale is that it cannot be expected to show its hand in advance of the negotiations. The unionist position appears to be that it simply does not want to negotiate.
The general structure for an elected body, as set out by UUP deputy leader Mr John Taylor appears to be a recipe for considerable procedural confusion.
In his scheme, the elected body (some 99 members, according to the reported British plan) would "appoint" at least five "working committees" involving representatives of all parties represented in the elected body. How exactly agreement would be reached on these appointments is not specified would there be a further "election"?
"The working committee would take evidence, negotiate and report upon" specific issues the Belfast/London relationship, internal administration of the North, Cross Border cooperation, Belfast/Dublin relationship, and so on.
Apart from the undefined mechanics of all this particularly the "negotiate" part the formula would seem to guarantee enough scope for procedural wrangling and disputes of interpretation to take the elected body well into the next millennium let alone the 18 month life span postulated for it.
But the clouding of meaning and the confusion of process has not been confined merely to word play. The report of Senator Mitchell's international body has been the butt of quite cavalier distortions and misinterpretation and generally used as a political football.
It has been misconstrued the Rev Martin Smyth claimed this week that Mitchell had recommended decommissioning during an elective process. It has been selectively plundered both Mr Major and the unionists blithely abstracted the six principles set out by Mitchell and regularly wave them now at Sinn Fein as a challenge.
They totally fail to acknowledge that Mitchell drafted the principles as a charter which should be signed up to by "participants in all party negotiations". Nor do they ever acknowledge that Mitchell offered a formula for an organic process involving simultaneously all party negotiations and phased decommissioning of arms.
Considering that the totality of the Mitchell report has never been seriously debated by the perpetrators of this piecemeal misuse and tinkering with it, their activities must astonish the author.
The UUP leaders, who glibly say that they accepted the report totally, might usefully offer their observations on a number of comments in it which are of more general application than the six principles.
The report said, for example, that "Those who have been persuaded to abandon violence for the peaceful political path need to be reassured that a meaningful and inclusive process of negotiation is genuinely being offered to address the legitimate concerns of their traditions and the need for new political arrangements with which all can identify."
In other words, the international body bluntly set out the need for meaningful negotiation leading to change in Northern society. It contained many other observations which would merit serious consideration rather than frivolous dismissal.
The use of language for evasion and obfuscation rather than for genuine communication and progress is perhaps the most depressing aspect of political life in the North at present.
