Adams makes IRA arms pledge to try to seduce Unionists

Tony Blair, the republican movement and Ulster Unionists remained locked in the final stages of a negotiation aimed at achieving a breakthrough in the Irish peace process yesterday. But Mr Blair and the Unionist leader, David Trimble, made clear that a statement issued by the Sinn Fein president, Gerry Adams, on future IRA activity did not in their view provide enough clarification.

Mr Adams, who was speaking in Belfast, said: "The IRA leadership is determined that there will be no activities which will undermine in any way the peace process and the Good Friday Agreement."

Mr Blair's official spokesman responded: "Does this mean that punishment beatings, exiling, arms procurement and development, intelligence gathering and targeting are at an end? We need to be absolutely definite that the transition has to be over, and that therefore these kinds of activities which have gone on in the past are at an end."

This stance was echoed by Mr Trimble who said: "It would be so easy for Mr Adams, when asked, 'Is there going to be an end to all paramilitary activity?' to say 'yes'. The fact that, at the second or third time of asking, he has been unable to give a clear answer, is, I think, fairly illustrative."

The hardline Democratic Unionist Party, Mr Trimble's main rival, dismissed the Adams statement as a "cynical election stunt".

Further commitment from the IRA would pave the way for confirmation of the 29 May Assembly elections. The key question now is whether Sinn Fein will come up with yet another clarification to add to the series of statements recently issued by the party and by the IRA.

Contacts are still going on between the main players, including the Irish government. Martin McGuinness, Sinn Fein's chief negotiator, warned of pressure on republicans, saying: "You can be sure that there are tremendous strains within the nationalist-republican community. People over the course of the last two days have been ringing our offices in unprecedented numbers, just ordinary nationalists and republicans expressing great anger. We have been urged to refuse to provide clarification."

Although the present dialogue between Mr Blair and the IRA may look like one based on syntax, it is the stuff of life and death. Mr Blair is trying to get the IRA – at its feared height one of the most lethal and long-lived terrorist groups in the world – to promise publicly that it will desist from a list of designated illegalities.

This project, which has been going on for many months, is now coming to a head. It has almost, but not quite, been completed to the Prime Minister's satisfaction.

There are many reasons why the Irish peace process has had so many fits and starts and setbacks, but one important reason is the IRA's continuing paramilitary business.

IRA misbehaviour has taken many forms, including occasional killings of alleged drug dealers, knee-cappings, beatings and exilings, arms procurement and development.

All these have generated unease, but it is the more spectacular examples of IRA activity that have so disrupted the peace process. These include involvement in Colombia, a break-in at Special Branch offices at Castlereagh, and the existence of an IRA political espionage ring at Stormont.

Republican reactions to complaints about these have satisfied few. Sometimes they say blandly that the IRA cessation is intact. Another republican response has taken the form of straight denials, which in cases such as Castlereagh and Stormont have carried little or no credibility.

It was the Stormont spying which led to last year's closure of the Belfast Assembly, since it caused Unionists to threaten to resign from the executive, leading the government to place it in suspension.

The Blair insistence on absolute certainty this time round is based not just on a desire to eradicate terrorism but also on the very practical calculation that a reconstituted Assembly might not survive another Castlereagh or another Stormont.

The Unionist commitment to power-sharing devolution is not wholehearted, and another IRA scandal would predictably lead to another Unionist walkout, this time possibly for good.

Mr Blair is in the business of trying to ensure that the republicans will in effect be bound by an iron-clad set of words and assurances that there will be no repetition. In the shorter term, the use of acceptable words would probably unlock a number of immediate initiatives.

These include government confirmation that Assembly elections will go ahead at the end of this month, a substantial act of IRA arms decommissioning, and publication of significant statements from both the IRA and the British and Irish governments.

The present Blair manoeuvres is thus based on injecting momentum into the process, bringing the Assembly back to life and then helping ensure that it survives.