NY Times Editorial: No Friends of the Irish

national | miscellaneous | news report Wednesday April 16, 2003 12:54 by NY Times

a New York Times editorial

April 16, 2003
No Friends of the Irish
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/04/16/opinion/16WED2.html

Five years ago the Good Friday agreement brought a promise of peace and justice to Northern Ireland's long-suffering people. That promise is now threatened by the Irish Republican Army's stubborn refusal to declare a final end to armed combat, give up its weapons and commit itself exclusively to peaceful political persuasion.

The I.R.A.'s destructive intransigence has delayed a package of further reforms that Britain, Northern Ireland's ruling authority, was prepared to announce last week, and that President Bush's recent Belfast visit was meant to support. It also sharpens political tensions in the province ahead of elections expected there next month. London and Washington, along with the Irish Republic, must keep trying to persuade the I.R.A. to change its mind.

The Good Friday accord ended decades of institutionalized discrimination against Northern Ireland's large Roman Catholic minority. The agreement restored self-government, provided for a power-sharing cabinet and set the stage for a long overdue reform of the province's disproportionately Protestant and notoriously abusive police force.

The agreement also allowed Irish republicanism's political wing, Sinn Fein, to enter government and pursue its goals of Catholic civil rights, British troop withdrawals and, eventually, a united Ireland. The clear understanding, though not spelled out in the agreement, was that over time, republicanism's armed wing, the I.R.A., would give up its arms and eventually disband. That still has not happened. Republicans say they have unmet needs, like further British troop withdrawals. London was ready to move on this and other issues if the I.R.A. had agreed to disarmament and permanent peace.

New Northern Ireland elections are expected at the end of May. The British and Irish governments had hoped these could be preceded by a package deal that would include an I.R.A. declaration and an announcement of the next round of reforms. If that had happened, power sharing could have been revived and the Good Friday agreement fulfilled. Now, the voting will probably strengthen extremists on both sides and slow movement toward the peace and prosperity that people of all denominations want. The I.R.A. must stop standing in the way.