Former British prime minister Tony Blair told Sinn Féin leaders Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness if the IRA went "back to violence" he would not see them again.
His blunt warning came at a difficult meeting in July 1999 - 15 months after the Belfast Agreement and two years after the re-instatement of the IRA cessation - as the British and Irish governments struggled to resolve the issue of IRA weapons decommissioning and persuade David Trimble's Ulster Unionists to share power with Sinn Féin.
Alastair Campbell, Blair's former spokesman and communications director, records the tough encounter in his diaries on The Blair Years published yesterday. The Downing Street meeting took place on July 22nd, the day after an IRA statement following on from more failed negotiations at Stormont.
On hearing news of the statement Campbell writes: "For one great moment, I thought it was going to be the statement we had all been working for but in fact it was deeply gloomy, critical of the [ British] government and with a pretty clear veiled threat to return to violence."
Campbell and others thought there was a case for cancelling the scheduled meeting but Jonathan Powell, Blair's chief-of-staff, disagreed. John Sawers, then Blair's foreign policy adviser, thought Adams and McGuinness brought Martin Ferris to the meeting "to show they weren't patsies and could be really tough with TB [ Tony Blair]". According to Campbell's account: "TB was pretty tough back and there was a fair amount of mutual fed-upness. TB said, re the IRA statement, 'Well, I get the message, and it's a pretty heavy message too.' McGuinness said 'Nothing to do with me. Not guilty.' In a different context, it would have raised a smile but on both sides there wasn't much humour."
Blair rejected Sinn Féin's complaint that Trimble had no interest in sharing power: "He [ Blair] believed the unionists did want to make it work, but they had people capable of talking themselves into despondency greater than any people he had ever met."
However, while Blair could put pressure on them he told the republican leaders: "I also know that if you go back to violence then I see none of you again. I'm a pragmatist but I feel things deeply. I felt Kosovo. I feel this peace process and if I get an IRA statement like that on the day Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness are coming in, I do not like that. I do not like the threat. I do not operate like that. And just understand if you go back to violence, I see none of you again."
Just weeks before this, the prime minister had berated Trimble and his colleagues for their rejection of a proffered IRA statement making a commitment to decommission weapons, albeit without a timetable either for its commencement or conclusion.
Campbell recalls: "'With all due respect,' TB said - which he tended to say when he meant to indicate a lack of respect on a particular point - 'I think you have a tendency to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory and you are in danger of doing that now'."
Campbell says Adams first conceded there would have to be decommissioning of IRA weapons on March 29th, 1999.
"It was the first time he, rather than we, had been that blunt," he says, quoting the Sinn Féin president saying, 'Look, we know the score, there has got to be decommissioning'."
Campbell's entry for the day continues: "It had also been announced where nine of the 'disappeared' were. The downside of that was it reminded people the IRA were killers. As TB said, are we really expected to be grateful that years after they did it they told us where they killed and disposed of a few people?"
The restoration of the IRA ceasefire in July 1997 had paved the way for Sinn Féin's rapid inclusion in the talks process to the deep discomfort of the Ulster Unionists. Blair sought to reassure them while admitting "he could not deliver the Irish government to say what we [ the British] understood by decommissioning happening".
Looking ahead, however, Campbell says: "TB said the principle of consent was paramount. The greatest difficulty for SF will come when it is clear this is not necessarily going to lead to a united Ireland."
Of Blair's first meeting with the Sinn Féin leadership in October that year, Campbell says: "GA and McGuinness were both impressive in different ways, Adams more prone to philosophising, McG always sizing things up." McGuinness also struck Campbell as "more pragmatic" than Adams, surprising when he said: "I know we won't get everything we want."
When Blair finally received Sinn Féin at Number 10 in December 1997, according to Campbell, "TB was maybe not as firm as we had planned. But he did ask . . .whether they would be able to sign up to a settlement that did not explicitly commit to a united Ireland. Adams was OK, but McGuinness was not . . . TB said he would not be a persuader for a united Ireland. The principle of consent was central to the process. Adams said that if TB could not be a persuader, he could be a facilitator."
Even though he thought David Trimble "could be very old-womany", Campbell concedes "he did have a point" after Mo Mowlam released the Balcombe Street gang and IRA leaders from the Maze "as a side favour" for Adams.
This was "disasterville" in terms of unionist votes being sought in the May 1998 referendum on the Belfast Agreement: "It had prisoners, past outrages, SF confidence and two fingers to the rest of you all wrapped up in one. Mo was not nearly sensitive enough to the UU side of things, because she found DT irritating . . . TB was livid all round."
Frustration with Trimble also inspired some of the "black humour" attending the negotiation of the Good Friday accord in April 1998.
With prisoner releases by then high on the agenda, Mo had everyone falling about "with the story of Plum Smith [ of the Progressive Unionist Party] asking whether he would get out in two years if he went in and wiped out Trimble."
Diary entries from the 1990s
At the first Downing Street meeting with Sinn Féin in December 1997: "There were flashes of humour. Mo slipped me a note saying she found GA sexier than McG."
An "extraordinary start" to a day in Dublin to meet Taoiseach John Bruton in September 1995. Sharing a bathroom with Mo Mowlam, Campbell knocked the door before going in. "'Come in' she shouted cheerily. I pushed open the door and there she was in all her glory, lying in the bath with nothing but a big plastic hat on. I brushed my teeth, trying not to look in the mirror and decided to shave later."
On Blair's first meeting with Gerry Adams, Martin McGuinness and a Sinn Féin delegation in Downing Street in December 1997: "On the way out GA took TB to one side, and clearly wanted to be able to brief they had a one-on-one session. All he said was 'Merry Christmas'. I found McGuinness more impressive than Adams, who did the big statesman bit, and talked in grand historical sweeps, but McGuinness just made a point and battered it, and forced you to take it on board."
Tony Blair thought David Trimble "a curious mix" - wanting to lead while being "needy" about how to do it: "It was as if he needed lessons - for example, he should bind in [ Jeffrey] Donaldson and then every time Donaldson slips the net he diminishes himself and not DT. He [ Blair] felt Donaldson was the one person who could really damage DT."
"Of the women [ in the SF delegation], I could not work out whether they mattered, or whether they just took them round with them to make them look a bit less hard."