First Things First, Mr. Adams

British Prime Minister John Major has been wrongly accused of appeasing the Irish Republican Army since issuing on Dec. 15 a joint declaration with Irish Prime Minister Albert Reynolds that included acceptance of “a united Ireland achieved by peaceful means.”

Nothing, in the short run, changes because of the joint declaration. But it has resolved a question that existed in many minds: Was Britain’s commitment in Northern Ireland to majority rule, or was it rather to unionist rule? By the declaration, Britain has unmistakably committed itself to majority rule, knowing full well that a nationalist majority in Northern Ireland, though not imminent, is demographically foreseeable within a matter of decades.

Those who charge that by this commitment Major has appeased the IRA misconstrue what has taken place. IRA violence did not blackmail Britain into the joint declaration. It was rather the prospect, extremely faint as it may be, of a possible cessation of unrelenting IRA violence that inspired the British government to give peace a chance. The joint declaration, as to its letter, can withstand violence from either side in Northern Ireland. But Dublin-London unanimity can lead to unionist-nationalist conciliation only after much further negotiation. And that negotiation may indeed rise and fall with the level of local violence.

If and when the negotiation gets under way, it will include talks between Britain and the nationalists and between Dublin and the unionists as well as between each and its presumptive (but scarcely, any longer, its actual) protege. But Gerry Adams, head of Sinn Fein, the Northern Irish nationalist party whose illegal military partner is the IRA, is disingenuous when he asks for unconditional talks with Major and yet suggests that a release of IRA prisoners may be a condition of those talks.

Major has the backing not just of Ireland but of most of the nationalists of Northern Ireland when he insists that a cessation of IRA violence is indeed a condition for talks. As for the prisoners, their release or otherwise is a question that must eventually be taken up, but it cannot be the first question. Agreement about them will come at midgame or endgame. We are now at the opening of the game, and the IRA must make the next move.