On THE Saturday before the IRA announced its ceasefire on July 19th, Mr Bruce Morrison met the Sinn Fein president, Mr Gerry Adams, in Belfast to hear a list of "concerns" that he wanted brought to the attention of the White House. It was history repeating itself.
Mr Morrison had been a key member of the group of IrishAmericans who had helped set up the first IRA ceasefire when they visited Belfast in August 1994. This time Sinn Fein asked for Morrison to come alone.
While the group had kept contact with Sinn Fein and the White House during the 17 months of the breakdown of the ceasefire, Mr Morrison, heading a federal agency of the Clinton administration, was the most involved. He had talks with White House advisers dealing with Northern Ireland before leaving for Belfast.
"I was able to interpret very clearly (for Sinn Fein) where the White House was." Sinn Fein "wanted somebody they knew could speak with authority to the White House and speak back to them".
How important for the ceasefire were the assurances Sinn Fein was seeking from the White House? "Absolutely indispensable. They had to be able to say to the folks in the IRA that what had been achieved before with respect to American involvement would be restored and built upon."
The Sinn Fein leader asked for assurances on three matters. "I was able to lay out for the White House what was needed and the necessary assurances were given.
"I communicated in writing and orally these things, and there was a process in the White House that gave back assurances sufficient to do the deed." The ceasefire followed "as day follows night".
Was President Clinton personally involved? "The NSC (National Security Council) was the one that processed the issue, but the President was personally involved. About that I am absolutely certain."
Mr Morrison points out that his role was limited to areas within the sole competence of the US administration and he pays tribute to the efforts of the British and Irish governments in putting the other elements of the package in place, a process which "required at least one change of government if not two" since May 1st.
Mr Morrison says that "the one thing that was most gratifying over the last 18 months" while the ceasefire had broken down was "the continuing commitment at the White House to work it out and stay on board and not to be deflected by the problems. That came through in the alacrity with which the response was worked up".
If Sinn Fein had not got the answers they wanted from the White House, could the ceasefire have taken place?
"Not now. I won't say never. But if they had gotten the wrong kind of answers . . . It wasn't like `Here's a demand and you must answer it'. It was `here are our concerns and give us a sufficient level of understanding that we can assure our people that they're not going to say: `How dare you talk us into this and have this happen'."
President Clinton's statement welcoming the ceasefire was "a kind of code, if you will, that is very affirmative, not backward-looking but is looking forward to a meaningful political engagement. That's what we're talking about".
The three areas where Sinn Fein and the IRA wanted White House assurances were:
Focus on the need for real political change in Northern Ireland and not just as a "window dressing". An understanding that "changes will have to happen in Northern Ireland for there to be a just peace."
Sinn Fein would have "the level of access and the kinds of rights that they achieved during the first ceasefire". This means that Mr Adams will get a visa which allows fund-raising and that he will be able to meet senior NSC staff in the White House.
Prisoner issues as they relate to the US. Mr Morrison did not want to go into details but says "assurances were given sufficiently sensitive to those issues that they were satisfactory".
There are two categories of persons involved here: The small group of former IRA members whose extradition is being sought by Britain; and a larger group of former IRA men who are not wanted by the British authorities but are facing deportation because they concealed their convictions for what the US regards as "terrorist" offences when they entered the country.
"Satisfactory" assurances were given for the second group of seven Northern Ireland men whose deportation hearings are at various stages. There has been anger in Irish-American circles over what is seen as the failure of President Clinton to intervene on their behalf.
Mr Adams made an appeal earlier this year and Mr Morrison says he has now got a "confidence-building measure" from the White House that the deportees' cases will be reconsidered.
The three men whose extradition is being sought escaped from the Maze prison in a 1983 breakout. They are being held in jails in California as the court proceedings drag on. Mr Morrison says that while their cases were raised in his talks with Sinn Fein, the US can do nothing until Britain drops the extradition requests.
Is there not a danger that the US will now be seen to be favouring Sinn Fein in the future negotiations as against the unionists and loyalists?
"No. I think that would be absolutely wrong. None of this suggests that. What it does suggest is that the US believes in broad based political negotiations in which the parties reach an accommodation that can gain the consent of the people in Ireland, north and south. That's the deal.
"But it is a conviction that the President has expressed, and that the White House has regularly stood by, that you need inclusive participation for things to work. ein to the table but not at the price of sacrificing any principles about violence versus democracy."
Mr Morrison points out that the White House was "very careful to be tolerant - if that is the word - of the shakiness of the loyalist ceasefire and never was in favour of throwing the loyalists out, even though a technical reading of the rules might have leaned in that direction." "The White House commitment wasn't that Sinn Fein should be in. It was that everybody should be in. This was the broad peace, not the narrow peace.
"This wasn't the SDLP/UUP deal that some people have advocated at certain times. This was the nationalist community, loyalist community, unionist community, broadly represented deal that was being sought."
Will the White House stand back, as it were, when the negotiations get going?
"The White House never quite stands back. It has an active interest but it never meddles in things that are moving ahead. It doesn't tell people what to say, what to think. But it is always expressing its interest in progress.
"What the US has always successfully done in this process is to focus people's attention on the achievable objectives." That is where bodies such as that on decommissioning of weapons chaired by Senator George Mitchell "came from".
Does the US see its role as a "guarantor" for whatever comes out of the peace talks?
"I don't think the White House would ever stand by the use of the word `guarantor'. But "friend of the process" and "supporter of a just settlement" would be things the White House has always stood for and stood by. And they expect everyone else in the process to have that commitment as well."