Bomb Makes Ira’s Point: It’s Back Explosion, Exclusion Of Sinn Fein Leaves Peace Talks Dead In Water

Speaking for negotiated peace in Northern Ireland last summer, Sinn Fein President Gerry Adams was heckled in Catholic west Belfast by a man who shouted, “Bring back the IRA!”

Adams replied, “They never went away, you know.”

It seems he was right.

A suspected IRA bomb that on Saturday ravaged the heart of Manchester, England, injuring more than 200 people, echoed Sunday as observers held out little hope for the limping peace process in the divided and bloodied province of Northern Ireland.

At least for the short term, it indicated that the Irish Republican Army is not willing to abandon violence in its search for a reunited Ireland.

Peace talks that opened amid controversy last week under former U.S. Sen. George J. Mitchell are dead in the water, some analysts say. Renewal of a cease-fire broken by an IRA bomb in London in February would have brought Adams and Sinn Fein to the peace table in Belfast for all-party talks that seem doomed to impotence in their absence.

Saturday’s midmorning attack brought no immediate claim of responsibility but bore several IRA trademarks.

In Sunday’s aftermath, scorn was poured on the IRA.

Said the Sunday Tribune in Dublin, Ireland: “The IRA has made its presence felt and told the rest of humanity on these islands that we and our peace process can go to hell.”

Said the liberal Observer in London: “The IRA, priding itself on its discipline, has collapsed into a mindless killing machine with a bankrupt ideology and political strategy.”

Claiming to speak for the IRA as its political arm, Sinn Fein has a powerful electoral mandate in Northern Ireland: It won 15 percent of the overall vote - and 40 percent of the Catholic vote - in elections for a peace forum last month.

On the basis of the mandate, Adams demanded entry to peace talks without preconditions. Britain and Ireland, strongly supported by the United States, have insisted on an unequivocal restoration of the cease-fire by the IRA.

Now, in the bomb’s wake, even that might not be enough.

Pro-British unionist parties demanded Sunday that Britain and Ireland ban all contacts with Sinn Fein.

“Obviously we are having to review very seriously and fundamentally our relationship with Sinn Fein, with the republican movement as a whole, in the light of what has happened,” Irish Prime Minister John Bruton said Sunday. “This is a slap in the face to people who’ve been trying, against perhaps their better instincts, to give Sinn Fein a chance to show that they could persuade the IRA to reinstate the ceasefire.”