There is still an expectation of a significant IRA gesture, despite yesterday's ostensibly pessimistic statement, writes Gerry Moriarty, Northern Editor
One must never be blasé when P. O'Neill lapses into negative mode, but even senior republican sources said yesterday's IRA statement was a tactical gambit - albeit with a serious message for the British government and Ulster Unionists.
One Dublin source put it succinctly. "I think the IRA was saying to the British that you are calling on us to carry out acts of completion. Right, but you better carry out your acts of completion as well," he said.
Well-placed republican sources told The Irish Times yesterday that IRA and Sinn Féin members from grassroots level to the senior echelons were expecting a major move from the IRA in the coming weeks.
"There is no other way," said one senior republican. Referring to the Sinn Féin president, Mr Gerry Adams, and the party's chief negotiator, Mr Martin McGuinness, he added: "The two boys want to ensure that things continue. So while the statement may be shrill, as Mark Durkan described it, that is just masking a desire to get things moving again."
Some reports have suggested that there were rumblings of discontent within republicanism at the demands that the IRA end all forms of active paramilitarism. The sources, however, were in absolutely no doubt that Adams and McGuinness were in full control, and that even some previous republican sceptics now agreed that the ballot box, not the Armalite, was the way to push forward with republican ambitions.
"Whatever might have been there over the past couple of years is dead and buried. Even guys, prisoners and such like, who were a bit reluctant about the whole process, have come round to see that politics is the only way forward. And these are influential people," said a senior republican figure.
He couldn't specify what the IRA might actually do. He wasn't sure if it would agree to visible decommissioning. "Perhaps it might be by video," he surmised. As for Sinn Féin joining the Policing Board, "that's done and dusted", he said very confidently.
It seems highly unlikely that the IRA would disband, however. It was pretty specific on that point in its New Year statement issued yesterday. The British government and unionists "sought to impose unacceptable and unrealistic ultimatums on the IRA", the statement insisted.
Nonetheless, with the right conditions the IRA could, through deed and word or pledge, go some distance towards delivering those as yet unspecified "acts of completion" requested by Mr Tony Blair.
One of the key questions that remain is whether such an act will be sufficient to persuade David Trimble to acquiesce to the reinstatement of the Stormont institutions by St Patrick's Day, the latest deadline to ensure that Assembly elections can be legislatively called for May 1st, as per schedule.
The British government is inclined to call elections for that date in any event, but without agreement by the end of February, or mid-March at the very latest, these elections would be fought in very complex and acrimonious conditions.
For example, on what platform would unionists campaign? For or against the Belfast Agreement? Would David Trimble pull one way, and Jeffrey Donaldson the other? What would be the DUP's attitude? In line with signals from the Peter Robinson camp that it could do business with Sinn Féin? Or in tandem with Ian Paisley's view that he would never parley with Gerry Adams? All pretty confusing and a turn-off for the voters.
Unionist sources close to Mr Trimble insist he genuinely wants power-sharing government restored, despite rumours that he would prefer to fight an election outside the Executive. "But to do that we need big movement from the IRA," said a party source.
We could go round in circles here. Which is what the two governments are concerned about. And that's why in the weeks ahead, much to the chagrin of the SDLP and the smaller parties, the focus will be on Dublin, London, Sinn Féin and the UUP.
They are the main players. In multi-party talks but probably more usefully in confidential gatherings or exchanges of papers the two governments, Sinn Féin and the Ulster Unionists will thrash out what each side requires and what is deliverable, focusing on issues such as demilitarisation, safeguarding the institutions, policing, loyalist violence, IRA adventures etc.
As evident from the statement one of the big republican concerns is that if the IRA finally makes a grand gesture that it will be spurned by unionism.
One Dublin source, sympathetic to this view, recalled a comment from George Mitchell during the Belfast Agreement talks to the effect: "This conflict is about violence and intransigence. If we get rid of the violence are we going to be left with intransigence?"
Negotiations between the four main groups will be about the fine detail of any new implementation plan to restore devolution. But as regards the bigger picture they will be about establishing some degree of mutual trust, and providing assurances that mainstream unionism is truly locked into the Belfast Agreement, and that republicans aren't engaging in sleight of hand.
Ulster Unionists say if the IRA is genuine they will reciprocate.