"We say to John Major we want to talk and we want peace." Mr Gerry Adams's words, only a few hours before the Wellington Street bomb on Sunday night, have a sickening irony in the aftermath. Just what kind of talk and what kind of peace does Mr Adams have in mind? Even on the charitable assumption that he was caught as much unawares as almost everyone else, it is relevant to ask what kind of talk and what kind of peace is he now able to offer?
It is notable that, apart from laying the blame for the breakdown of its ceasefire at the door of Mr Major's government, the IRA has given no further indication of its assessment of the political situation following 17 months of relative peace. During that time, Mr Adams has said nothing to suggest that the all party talks, without preconditions, for which he has consistently called, would not produce a solution. Granted, he has said nothing to hint at the compromises he or anyone else could be expected to make in order to reach such a solution.
But the assumption he has purveyed is that the simple fact of talks would resolve every division. Yesterday, in these columns, Dr John Alderdice argued that Sinn Fein based its peace strategy on the belief that the ceasefire would produce a nationalist consensus capable of persuading the British government to withdraw support from the unionists. When this consensus did not materialise, most obviously in the Forum for Peace and Reconciliation, the IRA reverted to the bomb.
This may, in some respects, be a simplistic analysis, but it suggests the limits of the efforts now being made to integrate Sinn Fein back into the political process. It is clear that no permanent, negotiated or complete peace is ultimately possible without Sinn Fein. The tortuous diplomatic and political attempts in the past 18 months to find a way of grafting into democratic politics a party whose motivation and readiness to compromise are the subject of the gravest suspicion have proved the general awareness of this proposition. Sinn Fein's claim that the delays some of which were certainly avoidable were due to bad faith by Mr Major's government and/or the unionists overlooks the extent to which its own good faith remained to be demonstrated convincingly.
If no permanent peace can be expected without Sinn Fein, it is equally the case that adapting Mr Adams's phrase there must be no Sinn Fein veto. Since the IRA broke its ceasefire, the two governments and party politicians have continued to look for ways out of the impasse. This has involved an element of make believe. Yet the instinct to try to restore the conditions in which dialogue may ultimately be possible is better than the one to recriminate and exclude.
Mr Spring has said he will meet Mr Trimble. There has been talk of a meeting between the SDLP and the DUP. A summit of the Taoiseach and the British Prime Minister is in the offing. There is no shortage of proposals on which the next step can be based. But the aura of gloom following the IRA resumption can only begin to be dispelled when there is evidence of minds converging.