Northern Ireland After Omagh

...For all the promise that the reaction to the Omagh bombing has generated, therefore, these are testing times for Northern Ireland political leaders in quest of a lasting peace...

...He is now trying to build bridges by working closely with the Assembly's Deputy First Minister, Seamus Mallon, a dedicated nonviolent republican of the moderate Social Democratic and Labor Party (SDLP), the North's largest Catholic political organization...

...The financial support of sympathetic Irish Americans, and a contribution of 100 metric tons of weaponry from Libya's Muammar el-Qaddafi (in retaliation for Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher's permitting British-based American aircraft to bomb his country following the Libyan-sponsored attack on Pan Am 103), has enabled the IRA to methodically accumulate a huge store of guns and explosives...

...But in the unlikely event that the IRA ultimately went along with disarmament, no one could rest easy either...

...Skepticism of his participating in the efforts to create effective North-South community bodies has also been voiced...

...Religious and civic leaders pleaded passionately for an end to violence and community strife...

...Although he had always refused to utter a single word that might be interpreted as a split in the Irish republican movement, in the wake of the Omagh slaughter he felt obliged to say: "The violence we have seen must be for all of us now a thing of the past, over, done with, and gone...

...Norman Gelb reports regularly for The New Leader on British affairs...

...But after three decades marked by bombings and shootings, the declaration by the man who once was—and possibly still is—a top IRA functionary represented, in effect, his public acceptance that guns and explosives will not shatter Northem Ireland's union with Britain, and that the ongoing republican efforts to achieve that end must be political...

...And some of the specific issues that have been responsible for the decades of terrorism and counterterrorism—religious prejudice, mutual suspicion, economic stagnation that fuels ingrained enmity—are being addressed...

...The Omagh attack was the most horrific terrorist action in Northern Ireland since the Troubles were triggered 3 0 years ago...

...Many Protestants doubt Adams" sincerity...

...They are reluctant to wait and see what role peaceful negotiations might play in their drive toward a united Ireland...

...In particular, the IRA militants are firmly opposed to decommissioning their arms, even though that is part of the peace agreement reached this past spring...

...She lived in Dundalk, a town once notorious for its terrorist connections, but its residents were no less furious about what happened in Omagh than was virtually everyone else...

...Outrage over the Omagh incident was so vehement throughout Ireland that it seemed no reasonable person, Catholic or Protestant, could continue to openly oppose negotiations designed to end such horrors...

...Amid the intense revulsion, one of the senior figures in the cabal responsible for the bombing tearfully expressed concern about the safety of her children and went into hiding...

...From their perspective, the cause martyrs gave their lives for must always live on, and the wickedness of traitors (often individuals who promoted compromise in search of peace) must never be forgiven...

...Adams' party has benefited from his widely publicized warm reception at the White House, and from being allowed to raise substantial electioneering funds among Irish-American organizations...

...The 500-pound bomb that was detonated on carnival Saturday, August 15, in the market town of Omagh may prove to have laid the groundwork for effective action to blot out the baleful residue of the past...

...Trimble,who as leader of the Ulster Unionist Party is the North's senior Protestant, has nonetheless abandoned his previous uncompromising suspicion of republicans...

...The historian A.T.Q...

...The IRA knows that surrendering its ability to threaten massive violence would amount to forfeiting its status as a paramilitary organization and giving up the strongest weapon it has to press for the detachment of Northern Ireland from the United Kingdom...

...A great deal is being asked of them, and whether they will actually be able to deliver is still an open question...

...Many of his fellow Protestants, and not only hard-liners, are convinced the IRA has merely called a tactical halt to its terrorist activities...

...British Prime Minister Tony Blair and Irish Prime Minister Brian Ahern joined in announcing heightened measures aimed at apprehending and incarcerating suspected terrorists (to the concern of some civil libertarians...

...In the light of such sentiments, the fear has been that—notwithstanding hopes to the contrary and an increasing degree of cooperation among the antagonists—peace remains a pipe dream and the bloodletting will go on...

...Relations have generally been cordial between members representing the Protestant majority, who seek to maintain the region's union with the United Kingdom, and the Catholic minority, who want Northern Ireland incorporated into the Irish Republic...

...A comparative handful of holdouts —and they are almost certain to exist— would make its implementation extremely difficult...

...It is just possible, however, that a single gruesome atrocity has changed the situation...

...His willingness to work with the Sinn Fein in the Assembly while the IRA holds on to its weapons has left him dangerously exposed politically...

...Moreover, they have not taken kindly to being outmaneuvered by Gerry Adams during the strategic IRA deliberations that preceded his pronouncement...

...Twenty-nine people, Catholics and Protestants, young and old, were killed and more than 200 were injured in the explosion...

...The question of precisely when the arms are to be turned in, a serious sticking point, was not resolved at a September 23 meeting in Dublin between Ahern and Mo Mowlam, the highest British official in Northern Ireland...

...Exploding the bomb was an act of defiance by rebels who objected to the IRA's temporary acceptance of a cease-fire in its protracted conflict with the British and the Protestants...

...President Bill Clinton also stopped in Omagh on the way home from his summit meeting with fading Russian President Boris N. Yeltsin...

...Indeed, the thoughts and feelings of many Irish are locked in the experience of bygone days...

...Meanwhile, Trimble has to worry about retaining the support of his constituents...

...The casualty rate was so high because a telephoned warning from the bombers in fact led victims to seek safety where they would be most likely to take the full impact of the blast...

...No matter how detached from controversial issues such bodies are supposed to be, they are seen as going too far toward dissolving Northern Ireland's relationship with Britain...

...The IRA's Army Council had signaled that it was prepared to examine what might be gained from formal negotiations between Unionists and republicans...

...Unfortunately, the SDLP has lost a good deal of its clout to the IRA-linked Sinn Fein...

...Responsibility was claimed by the so-called Real IRA, a rogue splinter group of the Irish Republican Army...

...The problem is the attitude of the IRA's most militant activists...

...Stewart has observed that modern Ireland, like Dracula's Transylvania, is "much troubled by the undead...

...Nevertheless, it would require a momentous act of faith to believe the violence spawned by Ulster's sectarian divide is irrevocably over...

...Ten people were arrested during September 21 dawn raids carried out in Northern Ireland and in the Irish Republic, where later that day a man and a woman were also taken into custody in County Monaghan...

...That same day the Northern Ireland Assembly's First Minister, David Trimble, and Adams—who have recently been working together amicably in private—accused each other of reneging on provisions of the peace process...

...They are bitter about being ordered by the IRA's Army Council to give up, or at least suspend, the armed struggle in which so much blood has been shed...

...Perhaps most striking was the statement by Gerry Adams, head of Sinn Fein, the IRA's political wing...

...According to Sean O'Callaghan, a former IRA activist, diehard terrorists would have access to this formidable arsenal hidden across Ireland in bunkers, ditches and under kitchen floors...

...For all of Clinton's personal and political burdens, prominent local figures said his presence was an invaluable contribution to the momentum that was building up for ending terrorist violence in Northern Ireland...