By Dave Riley
With six Catholics shot dead after six weeks of a loyalist killing spree, the prospects for a peace settlement in Northern Ireland seem bleaker now than at any time since the current talks began in October.
The latest victims were chosen simply because they were Catholic, ostensibly a response to the killing of a leading loyalist by the Irish National Liberation Army, which has no connection to the IRA. Despite almost all the current violence stemming from the loyalists, it is Sinn Féin which is being blamed.
While British PM Tony Blair is always keen to state his government's great love of peace, Sinn Féin's reward for being the least combative party in recent weeks has been a document which is supposed to outline a final peace settlement in Northern Ireland but which in fact offers Republicans even less than former Conservative Party PM John Major's initial statement three years ago.
The two-page "Propositions for Heads of Agreement" — drawn up by the British and Irish governments — was presented to the peace talks as a basis for future negotiations. Touted as a "breakthrough" by loyalists, the document is primarily designed to pose no threat to British control in the Six Counties and to lower nationalist expectations.
The document includes plans for constitutional change for both Britain and Ireland, including, as loyalists have been quick to point out, an end to any constitutional claim by Dublin to national unity.
While it moots a Six County assembly in Belfast, elected by proportional representation and with provision for some participation by nationalists, loyalists have enjoyed a built-in majority in the area since partition and such an assembly would be dominated by the loyalist parties.
Martin McGuinness, Sinn Féin's chief negotiator at the peace talks, said Sinn Féin unambiguously rejected the document as a basis for negotiation. "Everyone agreed that there could be no internal settlement within the north", he said. "Yet this package ... is seen by nationalists as a very determined attempt to bring about an internal settlement. We will not accept it. Nationalists will not accept under any circumstances any return to ... second class citizenship."
McGuinness linked the publication of the document to the onslaught of loyalist murders, saying that the proposals had been placed on the table "at the point of loyalist guns".
London and Dublin have denied that they yielded to the loyalists' intensified campaign of violence or the unionists' simultaneous threats to withdraw from the talks. But the response to these denials has been sceptical, particularly in light of reports indicating that the document had been cleared by loyalist prisoners even before nationalist negotiators knew what it contained.
Despite the refusal of David Trimble, leader of the main unionist party, to negotiate or even speak with Sinn Féin, loyalists have been handed a proposition gift-wrapped to ensure their continuing dominance of the political, social and economic life in the Six Counties.
Even the nationalist Social Democratic Labour Party, in a bid to marginalise Sinn Féin, its main electoral rival, has joined the unionist parties in accepting the propositions.
So with loyalist paramilitary forces murdering almost daily, and Trimble still insisting on a God-given right of Protestants to march through Catholic areas whenever and wherever they please, Sinn Féin seems to be the only participant in the talks which genuinely wants peace.
For the moment, Sinn Féin insists that the way to such a peace settlement still lies within the peace process. Speaking to Sinn Féin activists in Belfast on January 16, however, the party's Six County chairperson, Councillor Gerry O hEara, said: "It is important to remind everyone the basis on which Sinn Féin entered the talks. There were public assurances given that there would be an equality agenda and there was no predetermined outcome and no internal settlement; that no party had a veto; that no party's view would be given a preferential status; that everything was on the table for negotiation and there was a level playing field. It is clear that the preparation of this document and its contents fly in the face of these assurances."