Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: WEDNESDAY, March 15, 1995                   TAG: 9503160015
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A-7   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: CAL THOMAS
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

IN D.C., SOME OF THE IRISH GET LUCKY

The White House says it has been promised that money raised by Adams will be used for ``peaceful purposes.'' How would an American president have reacted if Britain had welcomed anti-war radicals for fund-raising events in the 1960s?

Talks among the British government, IRA and Sinn Fein (the IRA's political arm) are still in the initial stages. While the IRA has pledged to halt terrorist activity - and mostly lived up to that pledge so far - the IRA maintains a large stockpile of weapons and explosives. It continues to conduct practice runs for terrorist acts, and it engages in ``punishment beatings'' on residents of Catholic neighborhoods in Northern Ireland.

The invitation to Adams along with a luncheon in his ``honor'' on Capitol Hill to mark St. Patrick's Day can only be regarded as a crass appeal for Irish votes in the United States. In Britain and in Northern Ireland, there are grave (pun intended) reservations about Adams' objectives and the impact his U.S. welcome will have on negotiations to end the conflict between Britain and Northern Ireland's Protestant majority, which wishes to remain British, and the nation's Catholic minority, which seeks to unite with the Irish Republic.

As in the Middle East, the prospects for peace in Northern Ireland are anything but certain. Since the cease-fire, British Prime Minister John Major has repeatedly said that the IRA would have to destroy a large part of its arms stockpile before it could directly join talks to discuss the future of Northern Ireland. The decommissioning-of-arms issue is now the main sticking point in moving the talks forward between the British government, Sinn Fein and the IRA.

While government ministers are prepared to meet representatives of Sinn Fein before any weapons are destroyed, the government claims its demands remain unchanged. Those include the acceptance of the principle of progressive disarmament and an agreement on verification procedures.

The minister of Northern Ireland, Michael Amcram, has said, ``Nobody else is going to sit around the table with Sinn Fein until they are convinced they are committed to exclusively peaceful methods and they have decommissioned their arms in order to achieve that.''

One of Sinn Fein's negotiators, Martin McGuinness, told the London Daily Telegraph there should be no preconditions to his party taking part in talks. He added, ``We accept that at some stage in the future, arms will have to be decommissioned - that will be all the arms, loyalists arms, unionist arms, British army arms and IRA arms.'' That is an exercise in moral equivalency. The terrorism began with the IRA, and only the IRA and its political wing can put a halt to it.

While talks at the ministerial level could begin before the complete decommissioning of arms by the IRA, the process of decommissioning should start before the talking does. As for Gerry Adams, it is one thing to allow him to visit this country. That is in our tradition of free speech. It is quite another to ``honor'' him at a luncheon attended by the president and the speaker of the House. And it borders on outrage that we would allow him to raise money for an organization that has not committed itself to peace.

The president is playing a dangerous game. If Adams and Sinn Fein get rid of their arms, he could be seen as facilitating the peace process. But if terrorism begins again in Britain and Northern Ireland, Adams' trip and the president's decision to allow him to raise money while he's here will be seen as subsidizing a continuing war against innocent people and the British government, our supposed close ally.

- Los Angeles Times Syndicate