THE IRA ENDGAME; Why Blair is right to trust Gerry Adams as a leader

NO British Prime Minister in history has exerted greater efforts to bring the centuries-old conflict in Ireland to an end than Tony Blair.

Clearly, from the passion of his words on the steps of Stormont's Government Buildings on Friday night, he feels he is preciously close to achieving it.

But Irish history is littered with the ghosts of British and Irish politicians who have come to grief trying to untie the Irish knot.

David Trimble is the latest Unionist leader to try to succeed where all his predecessors have failed. The ghost that haunts him is the ghost of Brian Faulkner, who in 1974 took Unionism beyond the point to which it was prepared to go. As a result Faulkner was forced to resign and the Sunningdale Agreement to which he had signed up was consigned to history.

Trimble is determined not to make the same mistake and will only take the final historic step if he can take the majority of his party with him.

Looking back 100 years ago or more, Gladstone tried and failed to solve the Irish question, as did Asquith and Lloyd George. For selfish reasons, Churchill held out the carrot of Irish unity in return for the use of Southern Irish ports during World War Two.

In more recent times the Northern Irish Prime Minister Terence O'Neill tried to diffuse Catholic demands for Civil Rights. Unionists - inflamed by the roars of Paisley - denounced O'Neill as a traitor and he soon fell.

As we stand on the brink of the 21st century the climate is different. Republicans and Loyalists now recognise that their future lies in politics.

Tony Blair's words last week were addressed not just to the tired and fractious politicans with whom he and the Irish Prime Minister, Bertie Ahern, had been locked up for five long days, but to the people of Northern Ireland, most of whom - but by no means all - support the Good Friday Agreement.

Blair knows the final agreement to the deal which eluded him last week may depend on the pressure the two communities can exert on their political leaders in the two weeks ahead, when the province will reverberate to the sound of Orangemen's marching feet.

Today's likely confrontation at Drumcree is only a beginning.

Following the Prime Minister, Gerry Adams was upbeat, too, referring to "an enormous sigh of relief across this island".

But if the audience thought the historic deal had been done, they were soon disabused by David Trimble. Neither he nor his party was prepared to accept Sinn Fein's word that it could persuade those with arms to decommission them.

It was, said Trimble, purely "aspirational" and unionists still wanted to see the IRA begin to dismantle its vast arsenal before they would sit down in government with Sinn Fein.

Had Northern Ireland's First Minister said otherwise at this stage, the vultures within his own party would have been given the signal to swoop. Trimble knows his political survival hangs by the narrowest of threads, with up to eight of his own Assembly members ready to desert him should he abandon the principle of "guns before government".

For there to be the remotest chance of his Ulster Unionists signing up to the deal, two things have to happen in the next fortnight.

The IRA has to state unequivocally that it will decommission all its weapons by May 2000. And Trimble has to carry the majority of the 800 delegates of the Ulster Unionist Council and the majority of his Assembly members with him.

Whether this happens largely depends on what the IRA does. It's not impossible that pigs may soon be seen to fly.

It's widely recognised how far Trimble has brought the Ulster Unionist Party, not only by signing up to the Good Friday Agreement but by being prepared to share power with Martin McGuinness, whom many members regard as a terrorist.

Unionists believe that at least four senior members of Sinn Fein's negotiating team are members of the IRA's ruling Army Council.

Many members of the Republican movement, the IRA and Sinn Fein, do indeed have dual membership.

Even if that is the case, on the issue of decommissioning, they cannot speak for the IRA. If such a statement is to be made, it will almost certainly have to be approved by an IRA Extraordinary Army Convention.

When Unionists and others accuse Sinn Fein of taking everything and giving nothing in return, they are wilfully blind or misinformed.

The position of Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness is almost as precarious as David Trimble's.

The difference is that the Republican movement is disciplined and united in a way the Ulster Unionist Party is not.

If the statement from the IRA is forthcoming, it will only emerge with the backing of IRA volunteers who will have been persuaded it is necessary to ensure progress on the road to the united Ireland they have fought, killed and died for over the past 30 years.

The IRA's endgame is to do away with itself, to reach a situation where its people are in government, North and South, and the need for "armed struggle" is no longer necessary.

The IRA has made an astonishing journey from war to peace, as Tony Blair recognises, and has no intention of abandoning the strategy which its leaders believe is now poised on the brink of fulfilment.

If David Trimble needs the life-belt of an IRA statement, the IRA, albeit with great difficulty, may be persuaded to oblige. Then both sides really would be jumping together.

Peter Taylor is the presenter of the BBC series Provos and Loyalists and author of the books of the same name.

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