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ief 22 was bound to have a “distinctive character” all its own, something which was “inevitable” given their sharply antagonistic history. Since there was no “shared history of debate and negotiation”, dialogue would be a difficult road to traverse and would require a period of tentative exploration (Irish Times, 10 May 1995). Finally, and most importantly, there was the need to keep Unionism on board. This may have encompassed a degree of self-preservation on the part of the Conservative British government, as their parliamentary majority was slim and slipping away and Ulster Unionist votes would provide a necessary support. However, it was essentially a matter of keeping Unionists within the process by mirroring many of their concerns. If the peace process was to be kept alive, it would certainly need Ulster Unionists within it, and as Mayhew stated, he was not about to call for round table political talks if it meant there would be “a large number of empty chairs” (Irish Times, 5 September 1995). There are certainly indications that intelligence filtering up to the British government stressed that decommissioning was unlikely to happen and was relatively unimportant in terms of gauging Republicans’ commitment to peace in any case (Mallie and McKittrick, 1996, pp. 350– 351). This implies that a hard line on disarmament was not an intrinsic imperative within the higher elements of government and the security apparatus. British policy was essentially related to maintaining a Unionist interest in the process by pressuring Republicans on the question of disarmament. For the British government, the process remained brittle while the question of weaponry remained an unsolved part of the peace equation. This fragility had been exacerbated in British eyes by the inability of the Republican movement to categorise their ceasefire as permanent, despite repeated public calls from the government. Eventually the British made a “working assumption” that the IRA ceasefire was a permanent one (Bew and Gillespie, 1996, p. 74), but the political cost was to be the underlining of the decommissioning issue as a priority. The ‘Washington 3’ Test The demand for decommissioning had become most explicit in March 1995 in the form of the Washington Test criteria, announced by Mayhew during a trip to America. This called for a “willingness in principle to disarm progressively”, a practical understanding of the modalities of decommissioning, and the actual decommissioning of some arms as “a tangible confidence building measure and to signal the start of a process” (Irish Times, 8 March 1995). The overt packaging of the decommissioning demand in this way made the government’s position easier to defend (Mac Ginty, 1998, p. 34) and impossible to ignore. Whilst Nationalists and Republicans viewed the third part of the test, ‘Washington 3’, as a unilateral pre-condition, for Unionists it represented a capitulation since it necessitated the decommissioning of only some weaponry prior to talks. The British too viewed it as a “concession, a weakening of the government’s position” (Sunday Tribune, 10 September 1995), albeit a necessary one. The issue was now impossible to evade, given the emphatic trumpeting of the Washington criteria, but the dilemma now facing the government was that Republicans were failing to bite at this concessionary hook; instead the British themselves became impaled. Dislodging Washington 3 from their political skin would simply result in further Unionist disenchantment and accusations of governmental weakness. Similarly, assurances from the British Prime Minister that the advancement to inclusive political negotiations would “accelerate beyond belief ” following a symbolic decommissioning fell on deaf 16 B·I·C·C ears (Irish Times, 22 September 1995). Even the question of exploratory bilateral negotiations between Sinn Fein and the British government was dogged by the decommissioning issue, as the British insisted on the primacy of disarmament in any discussions, whilst Sinn Fein wanted a wide-ranging exchange of views. Eventually a compromise was reached in the form of a semantic fudge, which allowed Britain to raise decommissioning as the first and separate topic of discussion, after which Sinn Fein could refer to any subject they wished (Irish Times, 25 April 1995). The search for a British-Irish consensus While this sort of semantic wrangling allowed progress to occur in exploratory dialogue, it seemed that there could be no getting round the blunt terminology of Washington 3. The British view was that Sinn Fein’s disqualification from substantive talks was “self imposed” and there was no enthusiasm for finding a means to help Republicans negotiate their way round the obstacle of prior decommissioning. The idea that the question of decommissioning could be separated from substantive talks was seen as a dangerous chimera: there was “no twin track process. There [was] only a single track. Some parties are further down that track than others because they have never been associated with violence. Those that have been associated with violence can catch them up if they take off the brakes that they themselves have applied” (Irish Times, 21 June 1995). In this view, decommissioning was to be the direct evolutionary leap into political respectability; a more circuitous route, even if it could be started speedily, would simply not do. However, the British government was not operating in a political vacuum and had to take serious heed of its partner
in the process, the Irish government. An underlying necessity within the process dictated that the two governments must be seen to be moving together in the same direction as much as possible. Any diplomatic impasse in British–Irish relations filtered down into the Northern Irish parties and made progress especially difficult. An Irish resuscitation of the earlier Unionist idea of establishing an international body to examine the question of decommissioning was consequently accepted by the British at the end of June in 1995. Although Britain may have harboured suspicions that an attempt was being made to side-step the issue by pushing it down a separate track, this was less important than being seen to be moving jointly with the Irish government away from an extended impasse (Finlay, 1998, p. 289). An “almost wholly agreed” deal between the British and Irish governments on the remit of an international body and its connection to the Washington 3 Test, began to emerge in the autumn of 1995 (Irish Times, 6 September 1995). Decommissioning goes international A commission, to be chaired by the former US Senate leader George Mitchell would be established to deal with paramilitary decommissioning but its remit would be confined to soliciting willingness in principle to decommission and examining the necessary practicalities of carrying that out—in other words Washington 1 and 2. A fudge on Washington 3 was to be agreed in that, although bilaterals and trilaterals between the governments and Sinn Fein could take place, allparty substantive negotiations would only take place when the “appropriate conditions” had been met. However, replacing the blunt criterion of Washington 3 with a vague reference to “appropriate conditions” was not an effective way of baiting the hook, particularly given that the British government reserved its right to publicly proclaim that prior decommissioning was still a necessary test for Republicans. Peace processes thrive on semantic fudges, but not when they are accompanied by blunt restatements of what was meant to have been fudged. The British–Irish summit meeting in September, at which a joint agreement on an international commission to deal with decommissioning would have been announced, was cancelled at the last minute by the Irish government after officials ultimately failed to overcome outstanding differences. If the British felt that they could not explicitly retreat from the demand for prior decommissioning for fear of a Unionist evacuation from the process, the Irish had become aware that Republican anxiety about the planned fudge, and Irish compliance in it, could actually jeopardise the ceasefire itself. The shepherds could move no faster than their respective flocks. However, both governments’ need to maintain a progressive working relationship and their desire to court American influence in the process, pushed discussions on the establishment of an international decommissioning body forward. The idea of a twin track approach A Joint Communiqué issued a scant two days before President Clinton’s visit to Northern Ireland on 30 November 1995 formally launched the beginning of a twin track process. The main ingredients of the initiative included the “firm aim” of both governments to achieve all-party talks by the end of February 1996; the opening of “intensive preparatory talks” in which all parties would be B·I·C·C origin of the issue invited on equal basis; and the setting up of an international body to conduct an “independent assessment” of the decommissioning issue. The body’s purely advisory brief would include establishing the commitment of paramilitary groups to the principle of decommissioning and working out “a suitable and acceptable method for full and verifiable decommissioning” (Irish Times, 29 November 1995). The International Body comprised former US Senator George Mitchell as chairman, the former Prime Minister of Finland, Harri Holkeri, and the former Canadian Chief of the Defence Staff General John de Chastelain. Although a target date for substantive talks had been announced in this package—something which was designed to ameliorate Nationalist and Republican anxiety—the crucial test of Washington 3 remained unaffected by the initiative. As John Major said: “We haven’t changed our position on Washington 3. We won’t be asking the international body to question that position” (ibid.). The Communiqué was something of a fudge, in that both governments had trumpeted what had never been in dispute between either of them, and had agreed to disagree on the rest. Such was the nature of the process that it was important to be seen to be moving ahead together, even if activity was designed as much to distract attention from obstacles as find a way round them. British strategy: Picadorism or the creation of room to manoeuvre? Republican opponents of the British strategy on decommissioning felt that the British had either “no strategy” and were simply operating under “short term” considerations (An Phoblacht, 31 August 1995) or were using the issue as a form of psychological warfare to sow confusion within the Republican base (Irish Times, 21 April 1995). Even 17
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Page 7 and 8: In einem ideologisierten Konflikt k
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Page 27 and 28: that this would inflame Nationalist
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eing used to facilitate the convers
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Why did decommissioning occur? Alth
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on Republican militarism, boosting
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ANC African National Congress CIRA
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Graduate Institute of International
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T he transfer of resources from the
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