Madam, - What sort of power-sharing state did Bertie Ahern and Tony Blair want to create in Northern Ireland?
Now, apparently, the Taoiseach can tell us about the true nature of the republican movement and what it was doing ever since the Good Friday Agreement was signed. But it was not what he told David Trimble and was obviously not what he was telling Ian Paisley just before Christmas when he and Tony Blair nearly pulled off another miracle deal for the governance of Northern Ireland.
If the Taoiseach knew that Sinn Féin and the IRA were organising, knee-capping, spying, turning on and off the taps of tension and creating recreational rioting to order, so as to heighten tensions at certain times to keep themselves at the centre of the political world here, what does that say about the trustworthiness of the British and Irish governments? What respect had they for David Trimble, who spent his leadership trying to stay in a power-sharing arrangement at Stormont in which he knew he was being slain politically by republicans, something which the British and Irish governments also knew? Unionist voters, obviously, were little more than ballot-fodder.
Messrs Ahern and Blair might have got away with doing the same to Ian Paisley had not the republicans scuppered the peace process in its present form.
Obviously both leaders were quite content to see a Mafia-style state enshrined in the North led partly by Messrs Adams and McGuinness. They were prepared to endorse the use by republicans of a parallel language to that used by most of the rest of us. Bertie Ahern and Tony Blair knew all along that even though the republicans used the words we use, they determined what the words meant for them.
For them, murder is not really murder, as in the cases of Jean McConville and Garda McCabe. In republican minds there has been no election in Ireland since 1919. The plebiscite North and South on the Good Friday Agreement, according to Adamspeak, could only have been to validate Sinn Féin's political mandate and to kick-start what we were pleased to call the "peace process." It was a necessary device to get the republican movement into politics North and South. In reality it changed little. For republicans, the starting and finishing point until Ireland is reunited is still 1919 and the IRA is really the only true government of Ireland. - Yours, etc.,
JOHN DEVINE, Bangor, Co Down.
Madam, - I am heartbroken by the turn of events in Ireland. Shame on those who did the Northern Bank robbery and shame on those who have used that robbery to sabotage the peace process.
First, we have Hugh Orde, Chief Constable of the PSNI, appointing himself judge and jury - and proclaiming that the IRA did the robbery while feeling no obligation to place evidence in the public domain, much less before a court and jury.
Second, we have the Irish Prime Minister, Bertie Ahern (having been steamrolled by his extremist Minister for Justice, Michael McDowell) even outdoing Hugh Orde, by appointing himself not only judge and jury, but executioner as well.
He charged that Sinn Féin leaders knew in advance of the alleged IRA robbery - in other words that Sinn Féin leaders were, before and after the fact, co-conspirators in the robbery. In making that irresponsible accusation Bertie Ahern thus became the executioner, the hangman, of the peace process. And I say this as one who all across America has consistently praised Mr Ahern for his previous admirable work on the process.
Why, oh why, did Bertie Ahern make such an incendiary and irresponsible charge and didn't he see the massive damage it would do? Didn't the robbery, in and of itself, cause enough trouble? And even if he did actually believe it, was it prudent and responsible for him to make the charge, without due process?
What right, legally and morally, does he have to dispense himself from the absolute principle that a person is innocent until proven guilty? Is there one law for regular folks, and another different one for a Taoiseach? How could this be described in any other way than as an abuse of power?
What is going on in Ireland? The very people who - at such great risk and against such great odds - made the peace process possible, Gerry Adams, Martin McGuinness, etc., are now the very ones who are being blamed for harming the peace process. How absurd and wrong is that? And to make things even more bizarre, the very people who have made the irresponsible and defamatory charges, Bertie Ahern and Hugh Orde, both claim they want Sinn Féin to join the Police Board in Northern Ireland and not to be excluded from the peace process.
Come on now, is that really a tenable position? Who profits from the Northern Bank robbery? Surely not Sinn Féin, or the majority of Catholics in Northern Ireland who voted for the party. Who profited from the advice the British intelligence service gave Tony Blair that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction which could be deployed almost immediately? And is that the same intelligence service that Hugh Orde used to blame the IRA for the bank robbery?
- Yours, etc.,
Father SEAN McMANUS, President, Irish National Caucus, Washington DC, USA.
Madam, - There has been widespread approval of Caoimhghín Ó Caoláin's call on Sinn Féin members involved in crime to leave the party's ranks. I think we should reserve judgment. Given that Sinn Féin has, shall we say, a somewhat flexible attitude as to what exactly constitutes a crime, it is difficult to interpret his comments.
The murders of Garda McCabe and Mrs Jean McConville were not "crimes", according to Sinn Féin, so when Mr Ó Caoláin calls on his members to renounce crime, what does he mean? I think the Irish public deserves a clear and unambiguous answer. What is a crime, in Sinn Féin speak? - Yours etc.,
LOUISE CURTIN, Cabra, Dublin 7.
Madam, - Not for the first time, Vincent Browne (Opinion, February 23rd) manages to get it wrong on Sinn Féin/IRA. He now thinks, among other things, that Michael McDowell should "shut up" and that it's "worth another try" to secure a deal with the Provos (for that is whom the governments have been negotiating with, when one leaves aside the Sinn Féin fig-leaf).
This is where I think Mr Browne's analysis falls down: One doesn't have to believe that the IRA is about to go back to "war" (or for that matter that peace is not a worthy goal) to support the full weight of the State now falling on the IRA. In my opinion, what journalists are fond of calling the "peace process" has been more akin to a peace strategy on the IRA's part.
As Ed Moloney's Secret History of the IRA shows, in the late 1980s and early 1990s its military effectiveness was being ground down by the security forces. Since 1994 the leadership of SF/IRA (which Moloney's book and others make clear is united and in control) has engaged in a ruthless and cynical strategy to increase its democratic legitimacy and electoral success while using its violent capabilities as a silent intimidation of the democratic governments of this state and the United Kingdom.
Peace depends on goodwill and (at least some) trust, neither of which SF/IRA has brought to the table. The reality in today's world, especially given the current US administration, is that any IRA move back to large-scale terror would signal the end of the Adams-McGuinness political strategy. We must no longer accept their corruption of our democracy. Therefore, the Government should leave the "peace process" on hold indefinitely and prosecute IRA subversion vigorously. - Yours, etc.,
KAROLE MICHAEL CUDDIHY, Carrigaline, Co Cork.
Madam, - I welcome statements by members of the republican movement rejecting crime and saying that criminals have no place in its ranks. But do I believe them?
Well, to be honest, I just don't know. And I have no confidence about what the republican movement means when it talks about criminality.
Let's face it: believing a movement and a party that thinks the murders of Gerry McCabe or Jean McConville were not a crime is not easy. Itis even more difficult to accept a Sinn Féin spokesperson's word when the republican movement still believes it has the right to police certain parts of Northern Ireland with its own brutal and summary justice. It's not words I want from Sinn Féin, but actions.
There is one step Republicans should take now if they are serious about putting criminality behind them. That is to join the Policing Board in Northern Ireland and to openly encourage young nationalists to join the PSNI.
That would be an act of true leadership. That would be seen and accepted by decent people as a demonstration that they mean what they say. This is a test of confidence, not a battle of semantics. - Yours, etc.,
CONALL McDEVITT, Belfast 9.