So, Mudcatters who are interested: what do you think?

(*I* apologize for pasting so lengthy an article rather than blueclicky-ing; but I gather such news stories may disappear from their websites pretty quickly - ?)

IRA Issues Apology for Deaths
By SHAWN POGATCHNIK
Associated Press Writer

July 16 2002, 7:49 PM EDT

LONDON -- The Irish Republican Army issued an unprecedented apology Tuesday for hundreds of civilian deaths during 30 years of bombings and other attacks, a surprise gesture that could ease a crisis threatening the survival of Northern Ireland's government.

Prime Minister Tony Blair's government quickly welcomed the strength of the IRA statement, saying it comes at a time when the peace process forged in 1998 is under severe strain from continuing sectarian violence.

The apology marks the anniversary of Bloody Friday, when the IRA set off more than 20 bombs within an hour in Belfast on July 21, 1972, killing seven civilians and two soldiers and wounding scores.

Although the IRA has stated its regret in the past for individual acts, it has not previously issued so sweeping an apology, nor was it required by the 1998 peace accord.

The statement released through An Phoblacht-Republican News, the weekly IRA-Sinn Fein newspaper in Dublin, said the apology was aimed at improving the atmosphere in the territory's peace process.

But David Trimble, leader of Northern Ireland's biggest Protestant party, the Ulster Unionists, and head of the Catholic-Protestant government, had reservations.

"It is quite significant that this statement says nothing at all about the recent violence that the IRA has been involved in, nothing about what their future conduct is going to be," Trimble said in the House of Commons.

"Consequently this statement does not absolve the prime minister from the need for him to make clear what the government will do in the event of breaches," of the cease-fire by the IRA.

Trimble has warned the power-sharing arrangement would unravel if Blair doesn't set a tougher policy on alleged violations of the IRA cease-fire.

The outlawed organization, which is responsible for some 1,500 deaths, also acknowledged the grief and pain of the families of the combatants -- police, soldiers and paramilitaries -- killed during the violence.

Its statement said the future would not be found in "denying collective failures and mistakes, or closing minds and hearts to the plight of those who had been hurt. That includes all of the victims of the conflict, combatants and noncombatants."

In Washington, Richard Haass, the Bush administration's point man for Northern Ireland, called the IRA announcement significant.

In an interview, Haass it was important for the IRA and other parties to the conflict to deal with the past as part of the healing and normalization process.

At the same time, Haass said it would be helpful for the IRA and other paramilitary forces to "permanently giving up option of violence, no longer acquiring new arms and decommissioning the arms that they possess."

Britain's Cabinet secretary for Northern Ireland, John Reid, welcomed "the unprecedented strength of the apology" but also made clear that the IRA's future conduct was "the real test."

"The words we have heard today are, I believe, more persuasive than the IRA has so far got themselves to utter," Reid said in Parliament. "I strongly hope that the statement means that at last the IRA has turned its face unequivocally against violence.

" If they have, Northern Ireland has a bright future ahead of it. But the real test is whether the transition from violence to democracy continues and in so doing gives confidence to the whole process," he told the House of Commons.

The IRA gesture was designed to assuage Protestant anger over the continued involvement of the IRA linked-Sinn Fein Party in Northern Ireland's joint Protestant-Catholic government.

Protestant political parties accuse the IRA of repeatedly violating its 1997 cease-fire, and Blair is expected to make a statement in the next week about the status of that cease-fire and the survival of the peace process.

The IRA has made other surprising gestures at critical moments in the peace process, particularly its decision last October to begin scrapping weapons in cooperation with international diplomats. That move, followed by a second disarmament act in April, has helped preserve wavering Protestant support for the Trimble-led government.

However, opinion polls suggest a narrow majority of Protestants oppose keeping Sinn Fein in the four-party coalition and deeply distrust the IRA's motives.

"While it was not our intention to injure or kill noncombatants, the reality is that on this and on a number of other occasions, that was the consequence of our actions," it said.

The future "will not be achieved by creating a hierarchy of victims in which some are deemed more or less worthy than others."

"On this anniversary, we are endeavoring to fulfill this responsibility to those we have hurt," it said.

"The IRA is committed unequivocally to the search for freedom, justice and peace in Ireland," the statement said.

Jeffrey Donaldson a leading Protestant critic of the peace accord, called the statement a "half-hearted apology" that doesn't go far enough.

Copyright 2002 Associated Press