David Trimble was early. Pottering about, he waited with his usual air of
mild amusement for the journalists and camera crews to settle around the
table and in the corners of the small overcrowded room. He had arrived
even before the American journalist who was to introduce him and chair the
press conference, so when Peter Hickman turned up at the set time he found
the Trimbleistas already clustered around the podium.
The location was the National Press Club in downtown Washington. Every
year on St Patrick's Day, jetlagged and lamenting my lack of sleep, I took a
taxi from my hotel to attend Trimble's traditional early-morning encounter
with the media. The Club had the air of a university common room rather
than the usual seedy retreat for hacks. John F. Kennedy and Fidel Castro
had spoken there, as well as every other mover and shaker who passed
through Washington over the years. Trimble had been seen up to now as a
reactor, an accommodator, a coper, someone who would come to terms with
the new scheme of things on behalf of the unionist community, but
generally not a mover and shaker. Today would change all that.
The UUP leader had a startling announcement to make. After all the trauma
over the suspension of the Northern Ireland institutions five weeks
before, he revealed he was still prepared to go into government without a
handover of guns in advance by the IRA -- although he said it had to
involve the issue being "dealt with".
In the past Trimble had spoken in very specific terms about his
requirements. I could still remember the shock on the faces of senior
republicans exactly one year earlier when he told Adams at an unscheduled
White House meeting that he wanted, not one but several, decommissioning
"events" in which substantial and gradually-increasing amounts of rifles,
handguns, detonators and explosives would be destroyed.
The new Trimble demand was nothing like as specific. He was seeking a
visible and convincing sign from republicans that "people who hitherto
have been involved in paramilitarism and terrorism are going to put that
behind them on a permanent basis". His comments were so vague and
ambiguous the Belfast Telegraph called them "enigmatic" that Jeffrey
Donaldson said afterwards that he did not know if the leader had softened
his line or not. Along with another leading dissident, Arlene Foster,
Donaldson was a member of a working group on party strategy which had met
for two hours on 10 March; Trimble was present but gave no hint of his
pending démarche.
I hung about after the press conference to get a quiet word with Trimble,
and maybe some clarification, but could not get near him. Word had come
from Belfast that the Craigavon councillor, Jonathan Bell, who had been
mentioned as a possible "stalking horse" challenger for the leadership,
had instead decided to resign from the party. The UUP leader was being
asked for his reaction. Sir Reg Empey pointed to Trimble in wonderment,
marvelling at his leader's seemingly-endless supply of luck.
Trimble's initiative caught Sinn Féin on the hop. Having called on him to
show leadership and "face down his rejectionists", the republicans were
nonplussed when he took precisely this course of action; indeed the UUP
leader boasted afterwards of having "ambushed" them. Republicans initially
said it was all just for show, fine words on a foreign field that would
not be reflected in Trimble's actions back home. Pressure was coming on
them from Taoiseach Bertie Ahern who commented that there were aspects of
what Trimble said, including the weapons issue, on which "others" must
declare.
Some of Trimble's closest supporters were astonished by his remarks and
it appears the British Government was not expecting them either. The
conventional wisdom had been that Trimble could no nothing before the
annual general meeting of the Ulster Unionist Council on 25 March. At this
event every 12 months the party leader had to submit his name for
re-election. Win the vote before you take the risks, that was how most
politicians would have approached it. But this man wasn't "most
politicians".
Trimble's Washington words had rapid political consequences when, two
days before the AGM, the Rev Martin Smyth, chief whip of the UUP in the Commons
and a former Grand Master of the Orange Order, announced he was making a
bid for the leadership. Dismissed as a "carthorse" and a "decent dinosaur"
Smyth startled even some of his own supporters by securing 43 per cent of
the vote to 57 per cent for Trimble. Throwing traditional unionist
restraint to the wind, Trimble opponents punched their fists in the air
and shouted "Resign! Resign!"
In the background, senior Dublin sources were saying the February
suspension and its aftermath had proven no initiative could ever succeed unless taken
jointly by the two governments. Officials from both sides started working
on a formula from the beginning of April. Initially, there were two
issues: (i) What would full implementation of the Belfast Agreement
actually mean? (ii) What kind of statement could the IRA be persuaded to
make? Irish officials, say, would work out a draft and show it to the
British and Sinn Féin: "This might work." The idea was to get the
republicans to state, in effect, that the war was over. Dublin sources say
that a third factor came into the equation at the instigation of the
British, namely, the concept of a "Confidence-Building Measure" by the
IRA. "There had to be some dramatic gesture," a participant recalls.
Tony Blair and Bertie Ahern arrived at Hillsborough Castle on 4 May to
oversee another determined push to break the impasse. This led to an IRA
statement on 6 May which contained a surprise extra ingredient. In
addition to a pledge to resume contact with the General de Chastelain's
decommissioning body, it included an undertaking to permit outsiders to
look at its weapons within an unspecified number of weeks. "The contents
of a number of our arms dumps will be inspected by agreed third parties
who will report that they have done so to the IICD [Independent
International Commission on Decommissioning]." Soon afterwards the two
governments announced that the arms inspectors would be former
ecretary-general of the African National Congress, Cyril Ramaphosa, and
former president of Finland, Martti Ahtisaari.
It was unheard of for the IRA to permit non-members to see their deadly
hoard of weapons. But the move had been foreshadowed as long ago as
January, 1996, in a Sinn Féin submission on decommissioning to Senator
George Mitchell, which said that "an independent third party" could be of
assistance in getting round the problem. The document added tantalisingly
that "the disposal of arms by those in possession of them is a method
which may find acceptance". The dramatic initiative launched by Trimble on
St Patrick's Day in Washington had led to an even more dramatic result.
The UUP leader was in no doubt what it all meant and declared on 21 May,
"The IRA campaign is finally over."
