Why Bruton struck a hopeful note in the US

THE injection of a high level of optimism into the Northern situation was a conscious and deliberate act by the Taoiseach on his three-day official visit to Washington.

He first raised the spectre of a deal between the Ulster Unionist leader, Mr Trimble, and the SDLP leader, Mr Hume, on the contentious issue of decommissioning and the possibility of a new IRA ceasefire after his meeting with President Clinton in the Oval Room of the White House on Monday evening.

He heightened expectations still further in the more considered atmosphere of a sit-down press briefing with Irish political correspondents at lunchtime on Tuesday. He was asked then to justify his optimism on the talks and a ceasefire when pessimism was so publicly palpable at home.

And, for the third day in a row early on Wednesday evening, he repeated his hopes that an IRA ceasefire would occur soon when he was presented, for the second time by the Irish media, with the negative reaction in Belfast to his apparently exaggerated expectations.

This correspondent has no doubt, therefore, that John Bruton meant what he said about Northern Ireland on his trip to Washington during the week. There was no sense in which he was caught stumbling over his words. His message in Washington was studied, and stronger, on each of three separate occasions.

IT IS also interesting that not one member of the main entourage accompanying Mr Bruton in Washington the secretary of the Department of the Taoiseach, Mr Paddy Teahon, the Irish Ambassador to the US, Mr Dermot Gallagher, and the Government press secretary, Mr Shane Kenny - attempted, even privately, to lower the level of his expectations.

So what does the Taoiseach really know about Northern developments to justify his judgment that agreement is at band to deal with the contentious issue of decommissioning in the Belfast talks and that a renewed IRA ceasefire could be called "soon"?

Mr Bruton arrived in Washington armed with the information, not known to all the Northern parties or the Irish media, according to his account, that the UUP and the SDLP were making considerable progress in private meetings in drawing up a deal on the substantive issue of the decommissioning of arms.

"That is the topic that they are now very seriously engaged upon with the governments and with others," he told journalists on Tuesday. With "the reports I am getting from Belfast", Mr Bruton believes his knowledge of these UUP-SDLP developments to be based on fact.

THE grounds for his hopes for an IRA ceasefire "soon", however, seem to be thinner. Alter questioning his optimism on two occasions, it is clear that it is based on two different premises.

The first is that he believes Mr Martin McGuinness of Sinn Fein meant what he said recently when he stated that true negotiations could only take place in an atmosphere of peace. Mr Bruton went on to quote Mr McGuinness as saying that one of the things needed for an atmosphere of peace to exist was that there should be an IRA ceasefire.

The second premise on which Mr Bruton builds his early cease-fire expectation involves his application of logic to the IRA. He assumes that if a deal is reached between the UUP and the SDLP on decommissioning, logic would make it imperative for the republican movement to want to enter the all-party talks. This imperative would compel the IRA to renew its ceasefire "soon".

Mr Bruton's expectation of an IRA ceasefire is not factually based on any inside information, so to speak. He repeated twice during the week: "I have no way of being any way categoric about that."

It would be a mistake to conclude, however, that the Taoiseach did not have a very definite rationale for raising expectations about Northern developments in Washington. It is self-evident that Mr Bruton could hardly emerge from a meeting with President Clinton, in the middle of his election campaign, to tell US voters that his huge investment in the North was a wasted effort. But that is not the full story.

The Taoiseach's thinking behind his Washington message is more complex. There are facts which you know to be facts. And there are facts which can create other facts. That was the basis on which Mr Bruton was injecting optimism into the Northern pessimism after Drumcree.

He believes, in other words, that the UUP and the SDLP can broker a deal on decommissioning. Following on from that, he also believes that, backed by President Clinton, his demands for a consequent IRA ceasefire can create the conditions for the ceasefire itself.

Mr Bruton left Washington confident that, irrespective of the outcome of the presidential election in November, the US government will maintain its high level of involvement in the Irish peace process up to, and including, the provision of a chairman for the talks should Senator George Mitchell, in changed circumstances, leave the Belfast stage.

But, as Taoiseach, he will be judged on the accuracy of his suddenly optimistic judgments on the prospects for developments in Northern Ireland.