Sir, - There are only two possible reasons why the IRA has refused to give an undertaking to decommission its weapons:
(a) it wishes to retain the option of returning to armed conflict in the event of being unhappy with aspects of the governing of the power-sharing Executive;
(b) it has no intention of ever returning to armed conflict but it has other reasons for not agreeing to unilateral decommissioning of weapons - such as appearing to criminalise what it considers to have been a political conflict.
If the answer to the above is (b), the issue of decommissioning is irrelevant. If the answer is (a), there are also two possible responses:
(c) invite Sinn Fein into the power sharing Executive in the knowledge that the IRA will be easily defeated should it return to armed conflict because it will not have sufficient support within the republican community;
(d) exclude Sinn Fein from the Executive knowing that such a move will alienate the republican community and make a protracted and bloody conflict inevitable.
The options which the peacemaker should select are obvious: he should give the IRA the benefit of the doubt in the first instance by selecting (b), but he should also choose (c) to pre-empt the emergence of armed conflict in the event that (a) was the real reason.
The fact that the Ulster Unionist Party has discounted (b) in favour of (a) as the reason for the failure to decommission, and has chosen (d) as the response to that choice, is deeply disquieting. Indeed, it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that the Ulster Unionist Party is so bigoted that it is intent on provoking a bloody conflict - in which many people in the United Kingdom, Ireland and within their own community will be slaughtered - rather than share power with its republican neighbours.
The civilised world must not allow this to happen. - Yours, etc.,
John McGrath, Kilbride, Co Wicklow.