Rise that there will be no renegotiation with the unionists is unsustainable. Six months, a year, two years on, the suspension will have become the norm. Trimble will have long gone - he may have appeased the hardliners by facing down the Republicans, but his project has bitten the dust and he's lost his ministerial status.
Hard line loyalists are already ascendant. Sensing victory, attacks on nationalist communities are increasing and an end to the LVF/UDA feud is being negotiated. For their part the Republicans, wedded to 'peace', will not return to their failed strategy of armed struggle but will combine reinforcing their leadership within the ghetto communities with possible low-level defensive actions against loyalist attacks.
This is a predictable outcome of a process predicated on an acceptance of partitionist institutions. The assembly was moved to outlaw parties which 'openly or tacitly support, 'excuse' or 'minimise terrorism.
The planned law is directed at the militant Basque nationalist party Batasuna. This is a party with 200,000 voters, an MEP and a swathe of regional parliamentarians. Aznar, a key ally in the BlairBerlusconi European axis, has not been criticised by any significant Western politician.
In May the US threatened to extend the war on terrorism' to Cuba, despite the fact that a US governmental report in 1998 concluded that Cuba represented no significant threat to the US.
Additionally the US has accused the FARC in Columbia of supporting anti-US terrorism and has named the country as a central battleground in the 'war against terror'. It is generally accepted that the arrest of three Irish republicans in that country was a US-orchestrated move.
The US administration was reportedly furious with the Republican movement, accusing it of biting the hand that feeds it.
There can be little doubt that Blair's policy change on Ireland is part of a concerted US-led shift with global reach and not just some regretful response to police intelligence or Unionist pressure. Republican participation in the administration of the six counties is no longer necessary; it has served its purpose, but is also ments in from the cold, has long signaled an obstacle to a wider reaching policy of armed globalisation.
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INTERVIEW International Resistance