This was what the IRA said once more on February 11 and its leaders may be forgiven for feeling somewhat baffled when they got some grudging praise the following weekend for merely reiterating a position they signed on to nearly two years ago. A mid this tranquillity the capacity for organized violence remains overwhelmingly with the Unionists and with the British. Just visit south Armagh where IRA units are being asked to turn in their weapons. British forts dot the hillsides. British patrols still deploy.
British helicopters fill the sky.
The Royal Ulster Constabulary is still a standing, unreformed force with an awful history still vivid in Catholic minds. There has been abundant testimony that RUC officers were implicated in assassinations and bombings of Catholics, in conspiracies with other Protestant terror groups. Now many Ulster Unionists are insisting that the RUC never be disbanded and its name survive. In the view of many Republicans, only a beaten army unilaterally lays down its guns and only an antagonist acting in bad faith would try to force the decommissioning issue at this time. There is no reason to believe that when Trimble accepted his slice of the Nobel peace prize he traded in his instincts and outlook as a Unionist, leader of a party adamantly opposed to power-sharing or anything other than absolute Protestant dominance.