Europe's flash points may die down soon

By Gwynne Dyer

LONDON (JP): Now that the fighting in the Balkans has died away, there are only two parts of Europe where armed conflict still dominates the agenda: Northern Ireland, and the Basque provinces of Spain. And both of those conflicts could soon be history.

"May I look you in the eye and hear you say you are committed to peaceful means," asked British Prime Minister Tony Blair as he welcomed Gerry Adams, former chief of staff of the Irish Republican Army and now head of the IRA's political front, Sinn Fein, to talks at No. 10 Downing Street on Dec. 11.

Both men were taking a risk in meeting at the British prime minister's official residence, and the media were excluded even from photographing their handshake. But the IRA's cease-fire is now over five months old, and all-party talks on the future of Northern Ireland are already underway.

In Spain, the peace process seems much shakier. The Basque separatist group ETA ('Basque Land and Liberty') declared a semi- truce last month after a nationwide outcry over its brutal murder of a local councillor in July. But then early this month the Spanish Supreme Court jailed all 23 members of the leadership of Herri Batasuna, ETA's political front, for eight years.

On Dec. 12 ETA responded by murdering 64-year-old Jose Luis Castro, a retired shipyard welder who served as a local councillor in Renteria. Castro had refused a bodyguard though he knew he was next on the list. "I am not afraid. If they want to come for me, they know where to find me," he said recently.

So they did, and now both Basques and the rest of Spain are in despair about the peace process. But things are not as bad as they seem in Spain -- nor as good as they seem in Ireland.

ETA's campaign for Basque independence has killed some 800 people in the past 29 years, but the roots of the quarrel do not really extend back further than the Spanish Civil War of the 1930s.

The Basques fought for the losing side, and were so brutally suppressed by Gen. Franco afterwards that breaking away from Spain became an attractive option for many Basques.

ETA launched its campaign of terror before Franco died, and the Basques were still boycotting national politics when the rest of Spain negotiated the democratic constitution of 1978. As a result, the other linguistic minorities in Catalonia and Galicia secured far more rights than the Basques, who had nobody at the table -- and the overwhelming majority of Basque voters voted 'no' or abstained in the referendum that ratified the constitution.

But few Basques really want full independence, and ETA's hard core is only 50 or 60 gunmen backed by perhaps 500 supporters. The jailing of Herri Batasuna's leadership may permit a new group, less beholden to the gunmen, to take charge of the party. And the Basque mediation group 'Elkarri' has recently formulated a proposal for extending Basque rights that is backed by every Basque political party -- and has not been rejected by Madrid either.

The idea is to develop an annex to the constitution that "respects, protects and adapts" the historic rights of the Basque Country and the neighboring province of Navarra (where there is a substantial Basque minority) without going through the long and difficult process of formal constitutional amendment.

The draft law will be discussed by both regional parliaments early in the New Year. If it is passed by them and accepted by the Spanish government, that would leave the gunmen of ETA completely isolated. A real and final peace settlement in the Basque conflict could be as little as a year away.

That is certainly not true of Northern Ireland. The roots of conflict there are centuries deep, and there is no proposal on the table that could satisfy both the Protestant majority (who wish to remain British) and the Catholic minority (most of whom want to be united with the Irish republic). What Adams, Blair and the rest are discussing is really a long truce, not a final peace settlement.

Northern Ireland, with a total population of only 1.5 million, has seen over 3,000 people killed for political reasons in the past three decades, so a truce is not a bad idea. There have been long truces in the past, most recently in 1955-1968, and the manifest inability of either side to crush the other militarily means that it is high time for another. But basic positions remain unchanged.

The British government has not abandoned its commitment to keep Northern Ireland within the United Kingdom as long as a majority of the local population wants that. The IRA has not given up its determination to bring about a united Ireland. There's no point in killing people if you can't make progress, however, and so the IRA's more responsible leaders have been looking for an excuse to stop fighting for some time now.

The 'hard men' don't accept that conclusion, of course, and the British government was so slow in making even token political concessions to Gerry Adams that the IRA went back to blowing things up after its first, unilateral cease-fire in 1994-1996. But Adams declared a new cease-fire within weeks of Britain's new Labor government taking office last spring.

This time he is getting the political cover he needs. Sinn Fein has been admitted to all-party talks on Northern Ireland's future, and there will be some kind of all-Ireland political council as a sop to nationalist feeling. (The Irish Republic may also revoke its constitutional claim to sovereignty over Northern Ireland, as a sop to Protestants in the North). But it's only a cease-fire, not a solution: the irreconcilable rival claims remain.

The cease-fire could last for decades or forever, but it could also be blown away next year. So could Gerry Adams. He knows very well that the last IRA leader to step into No. 10 Downing Street, Michael Collins in 1921, was assassinated by his own colleagues within the year for having agreed to the partition of Ireland.