Sir, - As the gruesome search continues for the bodies of the tortured victims of the IRA, Gerry Adams speaks rightly of the need for the republican community to face up to what happened. He also speaks of the "pain" which members of the republican community are now experiencing.
But how deep is this pain and how much facing up will they be prepared to engage in? Breast-beating (even on a limited scale) is not enough, given that what happened went on over many years before their eyes, and must have been condoned by them. They could apologise and say they were wrong, but is that likely? There is something they could do, and we have a duty to put the challenge to them. The test is a crucial one: it is about saving the Good Friday Agreement and saving lives.
Can the republican community take the courageous steps necessary to get us over the decommissioning impasse? Will the pain they say they are going through permit them even to consider a workable compromise? For, without a resolution now, the spectre of renewed violence may well become a reality, countless more families will suffer and the sacrifices, hard work, commitment and hopes of so many will again be cast aside by the actions of a few extremists on both sides.
Will republicans still hold to their rigid position on the Agreement? Will they (who never showed much respect for legalities before) still plead for a narrow and legalistic interpretation? Will they persist in ignoring the overall spirit and meaning of that unique agreement ratified by the Irish people - an agreement which wasn't only about bringing in marginal groups from the cold but also represented an unprecedented accommodation between two deeply divided traditions, and between North and South, and agreement which, if allowed to work, will ensure a more peaceful, just, enriching and tolerant society for all our children? Will the republican community continue to ignore the reality that only 50 per cent of unionists signed up to that agreement and that those who did so in good faith have genuine problems?
Will the republican community still plead that it is unable to start the destruction of arms - arms that have murdered over 2,000 people (including 500 from the Catholic community) and mutilated thousands of others? Guns such as the one used in the brutal murder of Jean McConville, and explosives that have blown up men, women and children? Will they again tell us that they are needed for the defence of the Catholic community, when, in fact (as Mitchell McLaughlin pointed out in Drogheda last March), countless numbers of Catholics are alive now precisely because the IRA guns are silent. Will they still tell us then that they feel pain?
We all have to play our part, but the republican community is faced now with a crucial responsibility and a tremendous opportunity. Mr Adams, you have taken risks for peace and your community and not suffered for it (in fact, Sinn Fein has benefited enormously). Please don't talk of pain - get on with what has to be done. - Yours, etc.
Julitta Clancy, (Meath Peace Group), Parsonstown, Batterstown, Co Meath.