IMC must navigate spaghetti junction
As the two premiers fly in for yet another round of make or break talks, security expert Brian Rowan assesses the IRA’s ceasefire and whether a deal between the DUP and Sinn Fein is possible
29 June 2006
The talk in the political background is that Ian Paisley wants to be First Minister, that he knows if that is to be achieved then he will have to share government with Sinn Fein and that, while he will do that deal “in the right circumstances”, he still cannot see the route map.
Right now, that road is hidden in a kind of political spaghetti junction of stalemate at Stormont, of marching, of policing arguments and security and IMC assessments.
And if a way is to be found to that once unthinkable Paisley-’Provo’ deal, then we will not see it until the summer has gone and autumn arrives.
Where he sits, the Chief Constable is watching significant changes within the IRA - not an “army” that has disappeared, but an army that is different.
Almost a year ago, Seanna Walsh read the IRA statement formally ending the armed campaign and signalling the most significant acts of decommissioning.
“If you look at the evidence they are doing what they said they would deliver - no beatings, no shootings,” Hugh Orde told this newspaper.
He then posed a question, which he answered.
“Are they going back to an armed struggle? No,” is the assessment of Northern Ireland’s most senior police officer.
The IRA did not disband in July last year or since, and the Chief Constable is not suggesting that it has collapsed its organisational structure, but he seems pretty convinced that the republican “war” is over.
“You don’t disband an ‘army’ overnight,” he said. “The intent is the important thing. The intent of the vast majority (of the IRA) is to do what they have been told - to stand down.”
As Mr Orde sees it, “the big picture in a strategic sense is looking good”, but he will tell you that republicans still have more to do, including “engaging in policing in a positive sense”.
Settling the policing issue is also key to getting the DUP to do a deal - it is part of those “right circumstances”.
“Those circumstances are around the definitive end of criminality and the comprehensive dealing with the policing issue,” a party insider said.
“There are those who would be cautious about when to do it (a deal) and how to do it, but the leader and the deputy leader are on the one wavelength,” the party source said.
In Belfast recently, Peter Robinson met the four commissioners of the Independent Monitoring Commission (IMC).
Their work, their writing, their assessments in the weeks and months ahead might make the road map to an eventual deal that little bit easier to read - it might show the parties the way out of that political spaghetti junction.
The IMC’s first report on security normalisation or demilitarisation - what progress there has been on scaling down the Army’s presence here - will be written by the end of August and published soon afterwards.
Its most important element will be the latest terrorist threat assessment - how the police and other intelligence agencies assess the IRA’s intentions, current and future.
We know what Hugh Orde is thinking, and those thoughts are bound to find their way into the next IMC report - the one that will be ready for publication in very early September.
The commissioners, Lord Alderdice, Joe Brosnan, Dick Kerr and John Grieve, are due to meet in Belfast for several days in mid-July.
Their published September threat assessment will set the context for another IMC report in early October - a report on paramilitary and criminal activity linked to republican and loyalist organisations.
This will be a detailed assessment - “an overall picture” delivered in the clearest possible terms and charting developments inside the paramilitary world covering the two and a half year history of the IMC.
It is this type of report that the DUP is looking for, a report that will allow it to make its judgement on the IRA before it starts its consultation on the political way forward inside the unionist community.
There is a widespread republican view that the DUP leadership is not yet ready for a deal.
That said, we are told that the republican leadership is moving forward on the basis that a deal might be possible if the British and Irish Governments create the right context.
Sinn Fein is still involved in a party-wide internal discussion on policing, but its future involvement on the Board and in encouraging young nationalists and republicans to join the PSNI depends both on the transfer of powers and the detail of that transfer.
Before the autumn, before the IMC next writes and speaks, there is the business of marching to be dealt with.
In terms of the recent Tour of the North and Whiterock parades, it is a case of so far so good, and some unionists accept that that has had a lot to do with the republican marshalling of protests.
Ardoyne has still to come, and in the words of one republican there are “real worries about being able to cope”.
So we are not yet out of the marching woods - not yet sure that the summer will pass quietly - but if it does, that too should help pave the way towards some eventual working political arrangement.
We can’t yet see it in the confusion of that political spaghetti junction, but then it is not yet July.
The deal may not be done by November 24, but it is still my belief that it will be done - that Paisley and the ‘Provos’ will come to do political business, no matter how unthinkable that once was.
