c. 1998 Religion News Service

(Andrew M. Greeley is a Roman Catholic priest, best-selling novelist and a sociologist at the University of Chicago National Opinion Research Center. Check out his home page at http://www.agreeley.com or contact him via e-mail at agreel(at)aol.com.)

DUBLIN _ The Good Friday peace agreement in Northern Ireland is in trouble. How serious the trouble is remains to be seen.

In the worst-case scenario the agreement could fall apart.

The surface issue is the surrender by the Irish Republican Army of its arms. However, this is really a phony issue because the IRA could turn over its guns and explosives today and buy more tomorrow.

The real issue is the reluctance of a hard-line Protestant minority to accept the agreement reached this spring.

Under the agreement, two elements of the pact must be in place by the end of October: a”shadow cabinet”made up of members of all political parties who won sufficient votes in the election, and a”shadow”cross-border council made of representatives of the Dublin Government and the Northern shadow cabinet.

David Trimble, the Unionist (Protestant)”first minister”in the shadow cabinet refuses to permit either to occur unless the IRA begins to give up its weapons. Sinn Fein, the Catholic party affiliated with the IRA, points out that no such condition exists in the Good Friday agreement. The agreement merely says that by the year 2001 all paramilitary forces must disarm.”Decommissioning”of arms is a red herring issue which has blighted the peace process in Northern Ireland for years.

It was first introduced as a condition for negotiations by former English Prime Minister John Major after the IRA had announced its cease-fire. Major added the surrender of arms as a condition for talks under pressure from the Unionist members of the English parliament who were essential for Major to maintain his razor-thin majority.

The rationale behind”decommissioning”is that the IRA is a terrorist rebel group which has always been in the wrong and therefore must pay the price of surrender as a condition for peace.

The IRA, however, views itself as a legitimate revolutionary movement that need not surrender to anyone. Moreover, it argues that it has not lost its just war but has turned to a strategy of peace not out of weakness but from a position of strength.

Major surely knew that when he raised the issue and knew he was precluding any serious peace discussions with the IRA. However, the cease-fire was in place. He must have told himself that the situation was ideal _ peace without negotiations.

Like so many others who held his office, Major did not understand the Irish. Anyone who did knew the IRA would eventually revoke its cease-fire and terrorism would begin again. That is exactly what happened.

After Tony Blair won his overwhelming majority in the English parliament, negotiations did begin with the surrender of arms put off for further discussion.

The Good Friday agreement sees eventual disarming but does not set a date for it to begin. David Trimble’s claim that it must begin before the first steps are taken to implement the agreement with a cabinet and a cross-border council have no legal value. He is playing Major’s”decommissioning”card to appease his hard-line colleagues who threaten to walk out of the new Northern Ireland assembly if Sinn Fein is seated at the cabinet table.

Apparently he doesn’t understand, any more than Major understood, that this generation of Irish nationalist leadership is not only tough but smart. They are quite capable of calling his bluff, just as they called John Major’s bluff.

There is much scurrying around in Dublin and London to find a way out of the impasse, to give David Trimble something so he can keep his hard-line allies happy without giving him so much that Gerry Adams’ hard-line allies take up their guns again.

It’s a delicate dance, that of Unionist self-righteousness and Nationalist stubborness. Trimble has behaved irresponsibly, but must feel he has no choice; Adams knows that the men with guns are still skeptical.

Tony Blair will have to find a way out of the problem _ probably with Bill Clinton’s help, if the Monica Lewinsky nonsense does not interfere. If he does manage to finesse this, perhaps final, problem, then he will richly deserve the Nobel Peace Prize.

DEA END RNS